Jay Lake (jaylake) wrote,
Jay Lake
jaylake

[cancer] What to do with my body?

Unfortunately, I do not qualify as a medical school cadaver. I am too large and heavy. This apparently has to do with access to the internal organs as medical students dissect. Also, as liver failure will quite possibly figure prominently in my forthcoming demise, that can cause problems for teaching cadavers due to tissue discoloration.

So, back to the drawing board.

At a purely internal level, I'm completely unconcerned with the disposition of my body. As an atheist, the concept of bodily resurrection falls somewhere between laughable wishful thinking and deep irrelevance. I can be memorialized just fine without physical remains being present. We are in fact currently discussing memorial options.

If there were a convenient body farm here in the Pacific Northwest, I'd totally be down for that. But there doesn't seem to be any such thing in the western United States.

Likewise, plastination is kind of cool. I may yet look into that.

Unfortunately, both the above options would leave my surviving loved ones in some distress, I am fairly certain.

Several people have suggested memorial diamonds. These are synthetic diamonds made from the cremation ash. As it happens, I think that's intensely cool. And think how many diamonds you could make out of an entire human body! But prices start in the low $2,000s from small, low color grade diamonds, and quickly work their way up. I certainly cannot afford to have myself baked into fifty or a hundred diamonds.

On the other hand, we do have the makings of the world's weirdest Kickstarter...

The reality will probably be cremation and the disposition of ashes. I might look into a serious steampunk reliquary as well. Anybody know any sculptors or fabricators in the steampunk art world who might be interested in such a thing?

I dunno. Still noodling. The diamond option really appeals to me, but I don't think there's much of a market for 1/4 caret pieces of me at $3,000 a pop.

What would you do with my body?

Tags: cancer, death, health, personal
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