What follows is a joint post by Ms. Rivers a.k.a. Chris a.k.a. Mom and Steve. After watching numerous YouTube videos of the Long Island Medium (Theresa Caputo) and developing a slightly unhealthy fascination with her spiritual readings, Ms. Rivers wants to ensure our wishes are known about a future time after one or both of us have died. (On a side note, Ms. Rivers believes that our souls continue to an after-life, while Steve sees no reason to believe this in the absence of any evidence or proof.*)
Ok, here we go; please note, no firm decisions have been made about our final arrangements. Should either of us pre-decease each other and once we have both passed, we do not want anyone including our children to do the following:
- Place cremated remains in a cigar box until a decision can be reached about their permanent location, then lose the cigar box when moving. [Steve here: If you do this, I will haunt you, even if there isn't an afterlife. I absolutely hate cigars!]
- Place ashes in an urn/vase and keep it on the mantel (in lieu of burial). Or strap it into the passenger side of a vehicle to keep the driver "company" on outings.
- Divide up ashes and place them in vessels as keepsakes for multiple family members. In particular, do not fill up glass Christmas ornaments with ashes so that we can literally participate in each holiday season as decorations on your Christmas tree.
- Scatter ashes outdoors (especially on a windy day!) in a body of water, where it's likely they would immediately become lunch for birds, fish, and other land-dwelling things.
- Bury us in a cemetery without trees. Or rabbits. We want rabbits and other assorted non-human critters to frolic on top of our graves.
- Have some kind of enormous, gaudy, "I want attention" headstone. Neither one of us like show-offs, be it in this life or the next.
- Putting anything plastic (flowers, crosses, etc.) on our graves. We want to be buried in a cemetery, not a Dollar General.
- Unless you plan on taking care of them, no live flowers either. But if you do put live flowers on our grave and you were to take care of them, then I [Steve] would like Marigolds, as long as they are the multi-colored ones. But not the really big poofy yellow or orange ones.
Lastly, and most importantly, don't be sad when you think about us. Life is measured in countless ways, none the least of which is in the amount of love one gives. In our case, we've both been blessed to have found each other and to have children that will help us live on in spirit, always.
* * * * * *
(*) Slight rebuttal from Steve: It's not that don't believe (in an afterlife), as that would be far too easy, and by and large I've never been one to do things the easy way anyhow. Rather, it's more like "I want to believe" and "if the universe would just churn up some evidence, well, all the better".
