Cremation Urn Quotes

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Sifting through an urn of cremated remains you cannot tell if a person had successes, failures, grandchildren, felonies. “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory)
I don't want to spend a fortune on my cremation urn, but I really do want to look nice at my memorial service.
Lynn Flewelling
Maybe it’s not metaphysics. Maybe it’s existential. I’m talking about the individual US citizen’s deep fear, the same basic fear that you and I have and that everybody has except nobody ever talks about it except existentialists in convoluted French prose. Or Pascal. Our smallness, our insignificance and mortality, yours and mine, the thing that we all spend all our time not thinking about directly, that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we’ve lost one more day that will never come back and our childhoods are over and our adolescence and the vigor of youth and soon our adulthood, that everything we see around us all the time is decaying and passing, it’s all passing away, and so are we, so am I, and given how fast the first forty-two years have shot by it’s not going to be long before I too pass away, whoever imagined that there was a more truthful way to put it than “die,” “pass away,” the very sound of it makes me feel the way I feel at dusk on a wintry Sunday—’ ‘And not only that, but everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and then everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have put in to make sure we’re remembered, these’ll last what—a hundred years? two hundred?—and they’ll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I’m cremated the trees that are nourished by my windblown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and before maybe three or four generations it will be like I never existed, not only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here, and people in 2104 or whatever will no more think of Stuart A. Nichols Jr. than you or I think of John T. Smith, 1790 to 1864, of Livingston, Virginia, or some such. That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we’re all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine, in fact, probably that’s why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are.
David Foster Wallace (The Pale King)
Sifting through an urn of cremated remains you cannot tell if a person had successes, failures, grandchildren, felonies. “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” As an adult human, your dust is the same as my dust, four to seven pounds of greyish ash and bone.
Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematorium)
More than a hygenic method of disposing of the dead, cremation enabled lovers and comrades to be mingled together for eternity: The ashes of Domitian were mingled with those of Julia; of Achilles with those of Patroclus; All Urnes contained not single ashes; Without confused burnings they affectionately compounded their bones; passionately endeavouring to continue their living Unions. And when distance of death denied such conjunctions, unsatisfied affections concieved some satisfaction to be neighbours in the grave, to lye Urne by Urne, and touch but in their names.
Catharine Arnold (Necropolis: London and Its Dead)
To be knav'd out of our graves, to have our skulls made drinking-bowls, and our bones turned into pipes, to delight and sport our enemies, are tragical abominations escaped in burning burials.
Thomas Browne
At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It's you the hearse is taking away. I don't want to be there for your cremation; I don't want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, 'Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr'* and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushed over you. Neither of us wants to outlive the other. We've often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we'd like to spend it together." *The world is empty. I don't want to go on living.
André Gorz (Letter to D: A Love Story)
This was not just any urn. It was a cremation urn, housing the powdered remains of Mrs. Pule's mother Wanda, a woman so mean and nasty that she had it put in writing that upon her death she wished to be cremated and have her ashes scattered over people who had annoyed her.
Gerry Swallow (Blue in the Face: A Story of Risk, Rhyme, and Rebellion)
The original Shiro-sama failed, of course, and was ordered by the emperor to commit ritual suicide in his temple in the mountains. He did, and his followers cremated his body and put his bones in a sacred urn to be guarded until the time he was reborn." "And that's the Hayashi Urn?" she said. "A funeral jar? And I kept my cookies in it?
Anne Stuart (Ice Blue (Ice, #3))
everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and then everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have put in to make sure we’re remembered, these’ll last what—a hundred years? two hundred?—and they’ll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I’m cremated the trees that are nourished by my windblown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and before maybe three or four generations it will be like I never existed, not only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here, and people in 2104 or whatever will no more think of Stuart A. Nichols Jr. than you or I think of John T. Smith, 1790 to 1864, of Livingston, Virginia, or some such. That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we’re all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine, in fact, probably that’s why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are.’ ‘This is supposed to be news to us. News flash: We’re going to die.
David Foster Wallace (The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel)
Sifting through an urn of cremated remains you cannot tell if a person had successes, failures, grandchildren, felonies. "For you are dust, and to dust you shall return." As an adult human, your dust is the same as my dust, four to seven pounds of grayish ash and bone.
Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory)
The Enemy Within by Stewart Stafford There is more to a smile than the baring of teeth, His grin had all the warmth of daggers unsheathed, The lips did part but the eyes remained staring, The skin was pocked and trust was badly faring. The lips quivered at every imagined slight, The eyes glittered like a serpent's at twilight, Arms crossed in constant defence, The foot tapping, waiting to take offence. Who knows or cares of his jealousy's genesis, He strove beyond measure to become my nemesis, Seeking to frustrate me at every turn, And put me prematurely in a cremation urn. The hero can fend off any attack, Except for the knife that's plunged in the back, They may not even know the weapon's in far, Until the assailant's coup de grâce. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.
Stewart Stafford
The most common reason people dig up their pets is because they are moving. They can’t bear to leave Growler the Pekingese behind, and don’t want some new family who didn’t even know Growler building a swimming pool and sending his bones away in a dump truck. But they might also be feeling squeamish about what Growler looks like eight months after burial. Enter companies that will come to your house, dig up Growler, and have him cremated and brought back to you. Now residing in his bone-shaped urn, Growler is ready to travel to his new home.
Caitlin Doughty (Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies)
Dear patient (first name, last name)! You are presently located in our experimental state hospital. The measures taken to save your life were drastic, extremely drastic (circle one). Our finest surgeons, availing themselves of the very latest achievements of modern medicine, performed one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten operations (circle one) on you. They were forced, acting wholly in your interest to replace certain parts of your organism with parts obtained from other persons, in strict accordance with Federal Law (Rev. Stat. Comm. 1-989/0-001/89/1). The notice you are now reading was thoughtfully prepared in order to help you make the best possible adjustment to these new if somewhat unexpected circumstances in your life, which, we hasten to remind you, we have saved. Although it was found necessary to remove your arms, legs, spine, skill, lungs, stomach, kidneys, liver, other (circle one or more), rest assured that these mortal remains were disposed of in a manner fully in keeping with the dictates of your religion; they were, with the proper ritual, interred, embalmed, mummified, buried at sea, cremated with the ashes scattered in the wind—preserved in an urn—thrown in the garbage (circle one). The new form in which you will henceforth lead a happy and healthy existence may possibly occasion you some surprise, but we promise that in time you will become, as indeed all our dear patients do, quite accustomed to it We have supplemented your organism with the very best, the best, perfectly functional, adequate, the only available (circle one) organs at our disposal, and they are fully guaranteed to last a year, six months, three months, three weeks, six days (circle one).
Stanisław Lem (The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy)
Just feed your criminal into the machine and his cremated ashes fall out the other end in a plastic Chimu Funeral Urn. Infallible electronic jurisprudence prevent miscarriages and Suburbia is spared screams for mercy or some nausea artist strip on the gallows with a hard-on, scream, 'I'm ready for a meet with my maker!' and leer at the doctor so nasty or roll around the gas chamber floor shitting and ejaculating, while the sheriff whimpers at the witness slot - and who want to see the prick turn red like an old blood sausage and burst open when the switch goes home? The machine does it all, folks.
William S. Burroughs
Corrupting, there, forsaken, becoming, already, nothing. "And thy corpse shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall frighten them away to think that this is one of God's most terrible curses. But consider it carefully. No sepulchre. No cremation. No obsequies. Becoming meat for someone else's teeth, said Lorimer with some of his past passion. "Can you imagine? Can you imagine what a relief? Will we ever dare to look at a body without the shroud of superstition, naked, like it truly is? Matter, and nothing more. Preoccupied with the perpetuity of our departed souls, we have forgotten that, on the contrary, it is our carcasses and our flesh that make us immortal. I am fairly confident they didn't bury him so that his transmigration into bird and beast would be swifter. Never mind memorials, relics, mausoleums, and other vain preservations from corruption and oblivion. What greater tribute than to be feasted upon by one's fellow creatures? What monument could be nobler than the breathing tomb of a coyote or the soaring urn of a vulture? What preservation more dependable? What resurrection more literal? This is true religion-knowing there is a bond among all living things. Having understood this, there is nothing to mourn, because even though nothing can ever be retained, nothing is ever lost. Can you imagine?" "Lorimer asked again. "The relief. The freedom.
Hernan Diaz (In the Distance)
If anyone at my funeral says 'it's what he would have wanted', I'll kick the lid off my coffin and throttle them. Or, if I've been cremated, I'll flip the lid off the urn and become a dust storm in their eyes. Only you know what you truly want. Anything else is presumption skewed through personal agendas.
Stewart Stafford
What the sun compoundeth, fire analyzeth, not transmuteth. That devouring agent leaves almost always a morsel for the earth, whereof all things are but a colony; and which, if time permits, the mother element will have in their primitive mass again.
Thomas Browne (Urne Burial)
They burnt not children before their teeth appeared, as apprehending their bodies too tender a morsel for fire, and that their gristly bones would scarce leave separable relicks after the pyral combustion. That they kindled not fire in their houses for some days after was a strict memorial of the late afflicting fire. And mourning without hope, they had an happy fraud against excessive lamentation, by a common opinion that deep sorrows disturb their ghosts.
Thomas Browne (Urne Burial)
Some, finding many fragments of skulls in these urns, suspected a mixture of bones; in none we searched was there cause of such conjecture, though sometimes they declined not that practice.--The ashes of Domitian were mingled with those of Julia; of Achilles with those of Patroclus. All urns contained not single ashes; without confused burnings they affectionately compounded their bones; passionately endeavouring to continue their living unions. And when distance of death denied such conjunctions, unsatisfied affections conceived some satisfaction to be neighbours in the grave, to lie urn by urn, and touch but in their manes. And many were so curious to continue their living relations, that they contrived large and family urns, wherein the ashes of their nearest friends and kindred might successively be received, at least some parcels thereof, while their collateral memorials lay in minor vessels about them.
Thomas Browne (Urne Burial)
Not me,” Mary Alice said. “I’m being cremated and letting Akiko put my ashes in a nice urn. Maybe something from Pottery Barn. I can sit on the mantel and she can decorate me for holidays.
Deanna Raybourn (Killers of a Certain Age)
A Jewish man asks to be cremated and have an urn of his ashes placed in Bloomingdale’s since he knows his wife will visit him often.
Michael Krasny (Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means)
The symbolism of the two animals seems relatively clear if we refer to archaeological findings. A group of three clay statues was found in a field of Gallo-Roman urns that depicted a Matrona with a child, a rooster, and a dog.20 On a symbolic level, the dog represents death and the cock stands for resurrection. We can recall the Swedish saying “the dead are put to flight by a red rooster.”*25 The Latvians slew a black cat, black dog, and black rooster when they believed they were threatened by Meris, the Plague Virgin. The blood of these three was used to coat a rope twisted backward, which was then used to gird the house.21 As a symbol of resurrection, a chicken (or goose) egg was placed in Celtic tombs and, more specifically, in ossuary vessels that contained the remnants of cremated bodies.
Claude Lecouteux (Phantom Armies of the Night: The Wild Hunt and the Ghostly Processions of the Undead)
Crackers cheese beer, all that silence and chewing, the television and its noises. Loneliness a nightly death, bed a burial. All this dirt, all that wood. The sound of her voice, even that gone? Gerald’s cremated heart, Gerald’s aching burned-up heart. Nothing but urn left now. Gerald meaning to say, She’s alive and she can’t breathe, thinking how most of the time he hated her, that mean mouth, he missed that hate, its absence a hacked-up emptiness, Gerald meaning to say, She’s alive and she can’t breathe, Gerald saying, I’m alive and I can’t breathe.
Lindsay Hunter (Don't Kiss Me: Stories)
If you die, I’m dating your corpse.” “I’m being cremated.” “I’ll date your urn.” “My urn already has a boyfriend. They’re really serious too.” Cooper laughed against my neck then wrapped himself around my waist, swallowing me up with his warm embrace. “My pop has my mom’s name on his wrist,” Cooper whispered against my cheek. “Underneath, he has my name along with the lesser crap kids he got stuck with.” “I’m in college,” I blurted out. “Yeah, I remember you mentioning that.” “Tattoos. Kids. Dating my corpse. Seems serious.” Leaning back, Cooper adjusted me so I rested against his chest. “I always planned to settle down when I was an old fart like my pop. Meet some cute piece of jailbait and make a few bad seeds plus one decent kid I could trust with the family business. Instead, here I am not even done with college with a tattoo of my girl’s name on my wrist.” “You could change your mind.” “I won’t. You’re a keeper.” “I could change my mind,” I said, wiggling my brows at him. “Who would you replace me with? Seriously, look around and see what shit pickings you have to choose from. I’m the best you’ll ever do, baby.” “You are pretty sexy. Tall too. Yeah, I can see keeping you around.” A grinning Cooper glanced at Aaron. “I’m so whipped.” “It’s pretty nauseating, yeah.
Bijou Hunter (Damaged and the Beast (Damaged, #1))
In 1960 fewer than 4 percent of dead Americans were cremated, according to the Cremation Asso ciation of North America. In 2012 the figure was 43 percent and is expected to continue rising. Cremations cost less than a third of traditional funerals. At most funeral homes, the priciest urn costs less than the cheapest casket.
Anonymous
The primary cause of death was listed as cryptococcal pneumonia, which was a consequence of his Kaposi’s sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. Those, however, were only the obvious diseases. The KS lesions, it turned out, covered not only his skin but also his lungs, bronchi, spleen, bladder, lymph nodes, mouth, and adrenal glands. His eyes were infected not only with cytomegalovirus but also with Cryptococcus and the Pneumocystis protozoa. It was the first time the pathologist could recall seeing the protozoa infect a person’s eye. Ken’s mother claimed his body from the hospital the day after he died. By the afternoon, Ken’s remains were cremated and tucked into a small urn. His Kaposi’s sarcoma had led to the discovery in San Francisco of the epidemic that would later be called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. He had been the first KS case in the country reported to a disbelieving Centers for Disease Control just eight months before. Now, he was one of eighteen such stricken people in San Francisco and the fourth man in the city to die in the epidemic, the seventy-fourth to die in the United States. There would be many, many more.
Randy Shilts (And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic)
There is also evidence of urn burials, suggesting that cremated remains were interred in this way.
Hourly History (Indus Valley Civilization: A History from Beginning to End)
The Path We Must Walk by Stewart Stafford From dust, we are conjured, And, to black hole dust, return, Greater than parts that made us, From first breath to a cremation urn. O rake the ashen cinders over, With smiling teardrops past, A speck of dust, every echo, In an inner eye, fading fast. The cheerful moon, light in darkness, A hint of blazing celestial glory, Thawing all terrestrial tension, Life's character, a remembrance story. From fleshly body to a child of light, Weather kissing an empty grave, Wilting flowers nod to obsolescence, Sentiment, memory, unharmed to save. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.
Stewart Stafford
They said goodbye to Carita, who lay peacefully in a coffin full of rose petals, and watched her disappear behind the steel doors of the furnace. None of them was prepared for what came next. After a pause, they were led into a room on the other side of the building, and each given a pair of white gloves and chopsticks. In the room, on a steel sheet, were Carita's remains as they had emerged from the heat of the furnace. The incineration was incomplete. Wood, cloth, hair, and flesh had burned away, but the biggest bones, of the legs ans arms, as well as the skull, were cracked but recognizable. Rather than a neat box of ashes, the Ridgways were confronted with Carita's calcined skeleton. As the family, their task, a traditional part of every Japanese cremation, was to pick up her bones with the chopsticks and place them in the urn. "Rob couldn't handle it at all," Nigel said. "He thought we were monsters even to think of it. But perhaps it's because we were the parents, and she was our daughter... It sounds macabre, as I tell you about it now, but it didn't feel that way at the time. It was something emotional. It almost made me feel calmer. I felt as if we were looking after Carita." Nigel, Annette and Sam picked up the bigger bones and placed them in the urn with the ashes. The bigger pieces of the skull went on the top.
Richard Lloyd Parry (People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo—and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up)
For those who have never visited it, the downtown Powell’s takes up a whole city block. A giant concrete split-level sarcophagus of books. There is a ghost that haunts the water fountain. An urn of cremated remains that moves from room to room. The shelves spill books, used and new, and the aisles buzz with the kind of diversity you’ll only find at the DMV: dudes in suits and dudes in mud-caked cowboy boots, a woman with dreads and a woman with a tiara and a woman with bright blue hair. A carnival of wonders for a kid from the boonies.
Benjamin Percy (Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction)
The world is running out of good places for ashes. The Jade Rabbit
Mark Matthews
Where do you want him?" he asked, and I sputtered. Where do I want him? Literally anywhere but inside my damn house! "Do you have one of those human toasters? I don’t know much about funeral homes. Do you just do the embalming, or do you handle the urn shit too?” “You mean cremation?” I asked, feeling like I was fucking underwater. His entire face lit up, and he snapped his fingers with the hand that wasn’t balancing a corpse over his shoulder. "That’s the word. Cremation. Thanks. That was going to bug the shit out of me.
Alexandra St. Pierre (The Mercenary and the Mortician (The Silent Hollow, #1))
Where do you want him?" he asked, and I sputtered. Where do I want him? Literally anywhere but inside my damn house! "Do you have one of those human toasters? I don’t know much about funeral homes. Do you just do the embalming, or do you handle the urn shit too?” “You mean cremation?” I asked, feeling like I was fucking underwater. His entire face lit up, and he snapped his fingers with the hand that wasn’t balancing a corpse over his shoulder. "That’s the word. Cremation. Thanks. That was going to bug the shit out of me.
Alexandra St. Pierre (The Mercenary and the Mortician (The Silent Hollow, #1))
Pet Memorial Australia provides caring pet cremation services with pickup available in Sydney, Blue Mountains, Central Coast, Newcastle, and Wollongong. We offer a wide range of urns, keepsakes, and memorials, shipped Australia-wide. Ashes and urns are returned within 5 business days. Trusted for our professionalism and heartfelt care, we support families during a difficult time with reliable, respectful service and personalised options to honour your beloved pet.
Pet Memorial Australia