New final disposition idea: Instead of being buried or cremated, lets start encasing our loved ones in epoxy resin. You get to pick the resin color and what item of furniture they are. Maybe a nice coffee table, or an interesting dinner table-that would be quite the conversation starter. Maybe show grandma how much you loved her by adding LED RBG fairy lights!! If you pay a little extra, we can encase you late loved one between two beautiful planks of wood :oak, redwood, cedar, you name it! Find your Final Resting Resin™️ at the nearest etsy commission shop to you!!
Truly, I don't believe I have had more relief in a decision than this, and I didn't know I could actually choose, that I had a choice. I mean of course, I am paying for it, so shouldn't I get exactly what I want? For years I was so very concerned about no one attending my funeral, and hearing this character on this television show say that his mom chose NOT to have a funeral, the literal and figurative light bulb went off.
"I'll have what she's having."
If I was actually talking to anyone, I could already hear someone saying, well here is Trevor going and being themselves. I mean, who else am I supposed to be? I have never had the experience, at least in my conscious mind of being someone else. My life has been all about me putting myself and my needs first, why would I do differently for my death?
They say funerals are for the living, with the exception of a handful of people whom are quite frankly not all residing in New York state, I can't think of more than ten folks who would actually attend my funeral, so why should there be an expense for a fruitless exercise? Personally I feel the money is better spent on making my post-life disposition a reality.
More so I think in some ways I have moved away from the tradition, and let me be clear because I have written about this previously, I did find my father's funeral useful because I wasn't allowed to attend my mom's services. I didn't attend my late brothers funeral, and I made the decision not to make an appearance at my late grandmother's home-going services, after being the one to arrange all the logistics for the latter.
Having been a practical person all of my life, why would that shift during my death?
I had first had lofty goals of what to do with my estate, setting up complex trust for all the nieces, niblings and nephews, making arrangements for my apartment to be leased to one of the children as a place any of them could utilize temporarily in a time of need. I had foreseen having the estate pay all the related bills for the maintenance of the unit, and maybe a little left over to keep my art alive in some form or another.
But then I had a coming to Black Jesus, about how outside of three of the over forty children that I am related to, I didn't have contact with the majority of them, or even the attempt of basic courtesy. Why should I go through so much effort for folks who haven't any idea if I am even still on the planet, much less if I am doing well or not?
This line of thinking had me considering just donating my estate to some charity, but I think maybe some small allowances should be made for the children I do have contact with, with the major priority still being on the handling of my body and my wishes to be turned into soil, something I think I heard about on a podcast, and peaked my interest as making myself more useful to the future of the planet.
Vindictiveness is not the goal, practicality is the vision, and I'd rather those that wish to celebrate me, do so privately with their own memorial, not something arranged by the family that I do not have, that wouldn't even consider these folks in the first place.
It's a major pet peeve of mine that there is always such a disconnect with the lives people live, and how they are memorialized after that life. A lot of it has to do with the fact that we don't plan for our deaths, for some delusional reason we think that someone else will handle it not thinking about the emotional, financial and psychological repercussions of not only burying someone, but figuring out how to get in order a lifetime of decisions, while attempting to maintain some semblance of sanity.
I'd rather my death go as quietly and efficiently as my life did. I need to figure out what to do with my things, but more than likely I will suggest to the children the exact same thing I did for my grandmother, hire a moving service, move the stuff into a storage facility, pay for one month, than abandon it.
That sounds horrible, but the thing is the storage facilities are set up to deal with abandoned units. And there is an entire industry of folks who love to go bid on said units and resell or repurpose the things they find. It was so overwhelming to me to even consider for a moment going through over sixty years of my grand parents things, and figuring out where I was going to put more stuff. I don't want anyone to be burdened like I was burdened after burying my mom, my dad, and a grand parent. It was always more things to figure out what to do with.
On the day she finally died, I chose a few of my grandmother's paintings, some of the African relics she had, put them in a tote bag and left for Brooklyn, never looking back. I asked her former aide to oversee the movers for me in the Bronx, I met them in Brooklyn at the storage unit to oversee the load-in. The entirety of the physicality of her estate was handled in one day. With a check for the surplus of the sale of the unit coming a few month later. I had even made a little money, it truly couldn't have been any more fortuitous.
Thinking about my own estate there are two major elements, three if you include my body, which I should be able to make arrangements for myself. The other two are financial and physical, all the financial stuff that I have remaining, that I obviously can't take with me, and all the physical stuff I leave behind. Its truly just those two buckets, any other significance added to this stuff is purely emotional.
I will do as I suggested to SB, try to get rid of as many things on my own. It would be most ideal if by the time I am ready to go I was living a more minimal existence, but I am not putting too much confidence in all of that, I still have emotional attachments to my things, and even with most of them dead a familial obligation to hold on to other things, even though no family seems remotely interested in them.
Eureka!
This is the thing I really love about this daily journaling, it can really help me get my thoughts together.
Still no funeral, but a Come And Get It Party. Meaning have some of my designated living, organize a party right in my apartment where folks can come to obviously acknowledge me if they so choose, but more importantly come and get some of my stuff! Notwithstanding there may be little interest in the actual stuff, I think the non-traditional aspect of not actually having a funeral, but instead a party is a lot more, well me.
Just to those of you in the studio audience who think I was being very intentional and deliberate, I wasn't. This idea just truly came to me right now, it is also the culmination of the experience of picking up things in my mom's apartment, with all of her family who wasn't there in her last few days, picking over her stuff like vultures, and the civility of me filling up a single tote bag before leaving SB's home for the last time.
I want to encourage folks, by my giving them consent to help themselves, and not feel the violation of people taking things without permission, not that I will really care at that point, but I do now. If I may, I want to change the dynamic, playing fully into people's nature, everyone love's free stuff. Folks also prefer a party to a funeral, the vibe is totally different. And I have been a different vibe my entire life, no need to change any of that now.
This has been such a settling exercise, I can willingly admit I had some anxiety of how my end of life arrangements were going to go. I had general ideas, but wondered how much those were going to change based on how the nature of how my relationships were changing. I now understand why people change their will, as your relationships change so do your wishes.
I think I now have a general outline of what I want to do, that can remain the same even if those relationships change, and that makes the plan much more durable. As someone who worked in managing risk throughout my career I love that idea of reducing the risk around my post-life arrangements, I love deciding how my life will be celebrated, but at the same time clearing out the remnants of that life. I love being able to be intentional, rational and forward-thinking about not only my relation to the folks around me, but to my larger significance to the planet itself. I wish we had folks that were more conscious of their deaths, as they were their lives, and I think through this we could all live better, if we learned how to die better.
The fight for freedom of body disposition in Texas - SB 105 seeks to give Texans the freedom to choose. Continue reading to learn more.
An increasing number of Texans are tired of being told they don’t get to make final disposition decisions.
There are currently 26 states that have legalized alkaline hydrolysis. That means right now, over half the country has greater freedoms than Texans when it comes to the right to decide our final disposition.
Ultimately, the legalization of alternative forms of body disposition isn’t about safety, efficacy or even environmental protection. It’s about freedom. The freedom to have control over one last decision in your life that will have a lasting impact on how you’re remembered.
SAN DIEGO | Official: No one arrested in border clash will be prosecuted
SAN DIEGO | Official: No one arrested in border clash will be prosecuted
SAN DIEGO — No criminal charges will be filed against any of the 42 people associated with a caravan of Central American migrants who were arrested in a clash that ended with U.S. authorities firing tear gas into Mexico to counter rock throwers, The Associated Press has learned.
The decision not to prosecute came despite President Donald Trump’s vow that the U.S. will not tolerate lawlessness and…
