I listened to Steve Jobs give his commencement address to the Stanford graduates. He was talking about his cancer diagnosis. He tells the students that “No one wants to die. Even the people that want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.”
He goes on to tell them the obvious. Everyone is going to die. In some ways, he was fortunate. As he was preparing to die, he was able to share some of his wisdom with others in a unique way. He was also able to get his family ready and to take care of some of the details of “getting your things in order”.
He was right about the part that no one wants to die. We do not even want to talk about it. Over 70% of the people in this country do not have a last will prepared. So you can imagine how much thought has gone in to funeral preparations.
Why wait? When asked, everyone usually has an opinion. As a matter of fact, when asked more specifically about scattering ashes, a majority of the people could tell you exactly where they wanted to have their ashes scattered after they die.
I think that one of the ways to bring dignity to the death process is for you to have a say in what happens to your body when you die. You can pick out the method for final disposition. You can choose to have a traditional burial, cremation, or what is now a third option, bio cremation.
You can also talk about whether you want to be an organ donor and what kind of funeral service you want to have. Do you want to have an environmentally friendly service with a green burial? If you want to read more about some of these options and what you can do to start preparing, visit preparingtodie.com.
