As of December 16th, 2020, the opinion I hold about what will happen to my remains is this: It depends.

Because I deal with the dead all day, every day, people ask me frequently if I will be skeletonized upon my death, and donated to an institution.

There are many examples of individuals choosing to do this upon their death. A researcher named Grover Krantz donated his body to the Smithsonian, along with the bones of his Irish Wolfhounds, because of his love and desire for teaching, even beyond his death. A woman named Carol Orzel donated her skeletonized body to the Mütter Museum after a longstanding relationship with them in her life, so that people could learn from her skeleton about a rare condition she had called Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP).

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Both of these individuals had personal connections to the museums they donated their skeletons to, and desired to be teachers posthumously.

This is different from the skeletons I work with, because these people gave their bodies under the condition of anonymity.

I think, were I to donate my body to an institution, I would not provide the same medical knowledge as Ms. Orzel’s skeleton, and while Chonk and I are quite the duo, it remains to be seen if I will have the same legacy of education and research as Mr. Krantz and his dogs. The only teachable thing about my skeleton besides the fact that it is a real human skeleton, unless I undergo a severe medical event in the future, would be who I was during my lifetime. At my age, I have yet to accumulate all the family and loved ones I will ever have. There are people I haven’t even met yet who will be very sad to lose me when I die. Maybe one day I will have a wife and children and they may or may not want to have the very visceral experience of seeing my skeleton. It might be very upsetting to them.

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When a person dies, the only thing they have is the love of the people they left behind. If my future loved ones are fine with me being skeletonized, then I will do so. If they are not, I will be laid to rest by more conventional means.