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Update, and breaking the mood a bit--

  • Dec. 8th, 2004 at 10:36 PM
[fades] browns and reds
spottylogic
It sounds like--though I'm still not certain--the family has settled on cremation, with a memorial of some sort on the 23rd. I can handle that.

Everybody says "What can I do? What can I DO?" during this sort of thing. Sometimes, you get an answer. It's not always a nice answer, but, let's look on the morbidly bright side. I've been asked to help decide what to do with the ashes.

Now, some people might be a little put off by this, but I knew John pretty well. And I think he'd see this as a challenge.

"Why are we launching him from a trebuchet at the walls of the UT Architecture department?"

"He would have wanted it. Trust me."

So many options! I'm sure I'll eventually settle on something nice and sane, but in the meantime, best suggestion gets a home-made cake and a big kiss from the Chukar inmate of their choice :) Suggestions must end in something along the general lines of "He would have wanted it that way."

Much love,
Spotty :)

As an addendum, John was the all-time bull moose winner of the "take a bad idea and run with it" award, so I'm sure that, somewhere beyond space and time but with LJ access, he'd be saying "COOL!!!" to some of these ;)
  • Current Mood: excited Maybe had too much sugar
  • Current Music:"We Like the Party"

Comments

( 16 comments — Leave a comment )
swartze
Dec. 9th, 2004 04:43 am (UTC)
Repeat after me. Soul gem. maybe mounted on a percusion instrument of some sort.
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fizzitt
Dec. 9th, 2004 04:54 am (UTC)
You know how model rockets have a payload compartment in the front that's designed to blow open and release a parachute? If you skip the 'chute and put something else dispersable in there instead, it scatters pretty well. We did it with dirt, but I see no reason why ashes would be any different.

He would have wanted it that way.
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baktre
Dec. 9th, 2004 05:32 am (UTC)
Oo, that's a good one! Easy to do, too.
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spottylogic
Dec. 9th, 2004 01:36 pm (UTC)
(Nod, nod) I thought of that one too, but I went more for the "somehow attach him to high-end fireworks." I do like the "soaring into the air like an explosive angel with a pretty light show" sort of idea.
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fairy_wench
Dec. 9th, 2004 04:45 pm (UTC)
I told my mother years ago that that's what I want done with my ashes. My friends will get together for a barbeque on a lake, and at sunset there will be a professional fireworks display ending in a giant blue and purple starburst that scatters me everywhere. I actually remember telling John once, and he was rather impressed with the idea.
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spottylogic
Dec. 9th, 2004 01:30 pm (UTC)
"Apparently the nasal passage is not built to snort someones relative."

Hmm. I think, given the Austin allergy situation and the time of year, it'd be MONTHS before I'd get him out of my sinuses. I do like the line "Keep your nose out of my family business," though. That's wacky :)
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jerseytude
Dec. 9th, 2004 05:27 am (UTC)
Or, we toss him up on the roof, never to come down.

Oh, wait, that's only for Frisbeetarians.
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jerseytude
Dec. 9th, 2004 05:30 am (UTC)
What if we spread his ashes in the barbeque grill, slather it with gasoline, and have a great big pyre?
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spottylogic
Dec. 9th, 2004 01:33 pm (UTC)
Hmm...the downside, I REALLY wanted to cook a big barbeque after the service, and there's a very serious conflict of interests there. Things stick to barbeque sauce. Very fitting, though!
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themiskyra
Dec. 9th, 2004 04:06 pm (UTC)
I'm not sure if this rates at all on the 'weirdness' factor... but how about scattering his ashes over the grounds of the Texas Renn Faire? He really loved to go to that.

The color blue and windchimes would also be good to figure into any sort of burial/scattering/memorial, I think. And of course trolls, though I think they're all booked up this year already.
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auliya
Dec. 9th, 2004 05:19 pm (UTC)
John really, really wanted to go back to school. A lot of his life was, to use his words, "in the meantime" -- a holding pattern until he could get it together enough to take the plunge.

I understand all the gamer/renfest suggestions. That would definitely honor what John was doing with his life. But I'm not sure it honors what he might have been, given time. Just ordinary time.

Appendices:
At least once he seemed on the very verge of quitting his job and actually doing it, but the impulse was motivated by anger (at his job) and like most his temper-tantrums he calmed down within a day or two and didn't pursue university at that point.

I know he didn't want to go back to Architecture, per se, unless it was Architectural Engineering of some kind, because he didn't want to be bothered by the artsy-fartsy design side of the picture. I know he thought the Architecture department was populated with assholes and that the people who brought him to the conclusion that he even wanted to do Architecture were bastards who didn't tell him the whole story. But despite all this, any time we talked about the future, it was about getting back to school.
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knghtsky
Dec. 9th, 2004 05:33 pm (UTC)
Personally.. I think a huge mobile... with a pickle, some blue fuzz, a troll doll, a "Laws of the Wild" page/book, a BBQ fork, with his ashes at the center, forever making tones and sounds.
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squeakymaus
Dec. 9th, 2004 09:00 pm (UTC)
Adding to the architecture
I know he wanted to do Architectural Engineering. His creative side, warped and anti-artistic as it was, was one of his semi-hidden powerful features. I could see him wanting to be incorporated into the mortar between the bricks of a building to which he contributed. Maybe pass the hat to have a mason put in a cornerstone on y'all's house with him imbedded in it. I think Badger would have wanted it like that.
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tenar10r
Dec. 9th, 2004 09:06 pm (UTC)
Another BBQ idea
I think atleast some of his ashes should be placed in a small glass jar with a metal lid and snuggled into the bottom corner of the bbq grill. The rest spread by firework display at a grand BBQ festivity in his honor would suit him too. He would have liked something like that.
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jerseytude
Dec. 10th, 2004 08:39 am (UTC)
Two words:

Outer. Space.
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( 16 comments — Leave a comment )