Just flush my ashes down the toilet

 In the movie, About Schmidt, Schmidt, played by Jack Nicholson, is lambasted by his daughter for choosing the second cheapest casket, the one just above a pine box in price, for his wife.  The daughter comments that her mother deserved something better than that while also pointing out that everyone at the funeral took note of her father's frugality. 

 The scene hit home, as not many months before I saw the movie, I had to choose a casket for my father, who made his transition at age 94.  As the funeral parlor representative showed me the selection of six or seven caskets available, I remembered some of the things I had learned in my metaphysical studies.  My first concern was whether my father had actually "given up the ghost," i.e., his spirit body had left his physical body at that point in time.  The second concern had to do with the teaching of Allan Kardec, the French psychical investigator, who stated that the affinity which continues to exist between soul and body after death is sometimes extremely painful "for it causes the spirit to perceive all the horror of decomposition of the latter."

In his 1916 book, Raymond or Life and Death, Sir Oliver Lodge, the esteemed British physicist and radio pioneer, in a séance with medium Gladys Osborne Leonard, discussed the subject with Raymond, his deceased son. Raymond told him that the body doesn't start mortifying until the spirit has left it.  He went on to tell his father that he had witnessed a scene several days earlier in which a man was going to be cremated two days after the doctor pronounced him dead.  "When his relatives on this side heard about it, they brought a certain doctor on our side, and when they saw that the spirit hadn't got really out of the body, they magnetized it, and helped it out," Raymond explained through Feda, Leonard's control.  "But there was still a cord, and it had to be severed rather quickly, and it gave a little shock to the spirit, like as if you had something amputated.  But it had to be done." 

Raymond suggested that there should be a seven-day waiting period before cremation.  "People are so careless," he said.  "The idea seems to be ‘hurry up and get them out of the way now that they are dead."

I finally told the funeral parlor representative that I wanted the casket that would deteriorate the fastest, explaining to him that there are indications that the faster the mortal remains are turned to dust, the quicker the materialistic soul lets loose of his attachment to the physical body.  The representative gave me a very suspicious look.  When I told him that, for the same reason, I did not want my father embalmed, the eyebrows really raised. 

Out of fear of appearing cheap, not only to the funeral parlor representative but also to those who would be attending the funeral, I also opted for the casket just above the pine box in price.  If it were entirely up to me, I would have chosen cremation for my father, but he had already purchased his plot and clearly preferred burial.  My one attempt to discuss this subject with him when he was alive and lucid was met with immediate resistance, and so I did not further pursue it.    

 I welcomed the opportunity to delay burial for two weeks, not so much to permit friends and relatives to attend but to allow as much time as possible for my father's spirit to achieve separation and not be traumatized by the burial.

 I had asked myself whether I could impose my own beliefs, vague and muddled as they are, on my father and opt for cremation rather than burial.  My conclusion was that if I were absolutely certain that my beliefs are correct then I should override his wishes and choose cremation.  But in the absence of absolute certainty, I had no right to disregard his wishes.

I understand that all popes are encased in special airtight caskets and concrete vaults. Is it possible that the Catholic Church, like Schmidt's daughter, has failed to recognize that when it comes to caskets and vaults, less may very well be more?

As for me, I have asked my wife to wait three or four days, have my physical shell cremated, and then flush the ashes down the toilet.