Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
Speaker 1: There's Jerry. This is short Stuff. Getty up. So a
Speaker 1: while back we did a podcast. Um, I'm not even
Speaker 1: sure which one it was, but you said that your
Speaker 1: ultimate wish was to be Uh was it fired from
Speaker 1: a cannon? Yeah? Yeah, that's like so like yesterday's news.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, what's your current plan? Um? I actually am
Speaker 1: still in the process of figuring that out. Again. I
Speaker 1: am trying to figure out just how much or what
Speaker 1: parts of my body might be donated to science, uh
Speaker 1: if any I've kind of been creeped out by a
Speaker 1: lot of the stories where it's like we found a
Speaker 1: head in the woods and it was clearly surgically removed
Speaker 1: and I guess the people who it was donated too
Speaker 1: didn't need it anymore, so they just dumped it in
Speaker 1: the woods kind of stuff, right, And you don't want
Speaker 1: to one day become a soccer ball for a wildlife.
Speaker 1: But the weird thing is is like when I read
Speaker 1: about stuff like what we're about to talk about, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if this land gets subdivided a hundred
Speaker 1: years from now and somebody accidentally digs up the grave.
Speaker 1: Who cares? So it's weird, like part of me is
Speaker 1: very precious about what happens to me after I die,
Speaker 1: and another part of me is like, it does not matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm in that camp still. I I have an alarming
Speaker 1: amount of um or a lack of reverence for human
Speaker 1: corpse after they're they're gone. I know I've seen you
Speaker 1: p on one before. Now I wouldn't do that, but
Speaker 1: it just I don't know, man, I just think that
Speaker 1: once you're gone, you're gone, So you know, burn me up,
Speaker 1: ash me up, spread me around someplace. I liked cut
Speaker 1: you into lines and snort you up. I did bury
Speaker 1: my cat Lauren in the backyard, but all of our
Speaker 1: other animals have been cremated. And Emily didn't love the
Speaker 1: idea of bearing Lauren, but she was like, he's your cat.
Speaker 1: You do what you want, and I like, I like
Speaker 1: him being out there. Yeah, I'm with you. So there's
Speaker 1: really no beef that you're gonna get from anybody for
Speaker 1: burying Lauren in the backyard. And by the way, r
Speaker 1: I p Laurent. He was one of the great ones.
Speaker 1: But um if Laurent had been say your father for
Speaker 1: your brother or something like that. Let's go with my brother. Okay,
Speaker 1: if Lauren had been your brother, if Lauren was Scott,
Speaker 1: and you tried to bury Scott in your yard, but
Speaker 1: you would have probably run into some issues with the authorities.
Speaker 1: At the very least, your neighbors would have been rather
Speaker 1: upset with you, and they could have called the cops
Speaker 1: on you, and the cops would have been like, dig
Speaker 1: your brother up, and that would be that. And I'd
Speaker 1: dig up Laurn and be like here he is, right,
Speaker 1: Blio switcher too. Yeah, Well, this is definitely an old
Speaker 1: prairie kind of thing, the idea of bearing relatives on
Speaker 1: your land. Um, and it is still really very much
Speaker 1: legal in a lot of states. California won't let you
Speaker 1: because I guess the real estate is just super valuable
Speaker 1: in that. They said that are concerns that in the future,
Speaker 1: like you were talking about, if they subdivide their land
Speaker 1: to sell parcels and plots, that someone might be disturbed. Uh.
Speaker 1: Washington State, Indiana and Washington d C. Is on record
Speaker 1: is just being like there's no room. Sorry, right, barrier
Speaker 1: dead in Virginia probably so right sore so that, but
Speaker 1: anywhere else you can if you own enough land bury
Speaker 1: anybody you want to on your land, especially a family member.
Speaker 1: I think that probably greases the wheels a little more
Speaker 1: if you're actually a blood relative or relative by marriage
Speaker 1: of them. But there are some rules that you have
Speaker 1: to follow no matter what. But one of the first
Speaker 1: questions you want to ask yourself before you actually do
Speaker 1: this is do I really want to do this? Because
Speaker 1: if you're not planning on, you know, spending your your
Speaker 1: dying days on this piece of property and handing it
Speaker 1: down to your your kid who wants that property, there's
Speaker 1: a good chance you might want to sell that property
Speaker 1: in the future, and it may it may affect the
Speaker 1: resale of that house and property knowing that there's a
Speaker 1: dead body buried in what's now a cemetery on your land. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like I got to give my house one day to
Speaker 1: my daughter and she's like, uh, gross, Uncle Scott and
Speaker 1: Laurnner back there right, No thanks, And why did you
Speaker 1: make them share the same great? Yeah, it's under the
Speaker 1: bird bath, it really is. Um. So if you were
Speaker 1: going to do this, uh, And we'll get into the
Speaker 1: nitpicky details after the break, but there are definitely going
Speaker 1: to be nitpicky details. You can't just say, well, it's
Speaker 1: legal in my state. Here we go, give me a shouble. Um.
Speaker 1: There are rules and regulations depending on the state and
Speaker 1: the county or the district that you're in. Um, they're
Speaker 1: definitely gonna be setbacks, like you can't bury it right
Speaker 1: next to your property line or next to a stream
Speaker 1: because it's pretty Um, it's gonna have to be well
Speaker 1: away from the water table any kind of water, and
Speaker 1: any kind of building or adjoining properties. Yeah, which are
Speaker 1: I mean, really good things to keep in mind. You
Speaker 1: don't want the could ever fouling up the local water
Speaker 1: supply basically, so you want to take a break and
Speaker 1: then come back and get into the real deeds. Let's
Speaker 1: do it. Okay, okay, Chuck. So you've donned your overalls
Speaker 1: and taking your shoes off, got a little thing of
Speaker 1: grain in your teeth, and you're saying, I'm ready to
Speaker 1: bury a loved one. Just give me one first, which
Speaker 1: I would not do barefoot. You wouldn't know. So there
Speaker 1: there are some states where you can just basically do that.
Speaker 1: You can show up at the hospital or the hospit
Speaker 1: this or wherever your deceased loved one is and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm a blood relative. Here's proof, give me the body.
Speaker 1: Put the body in your station wagon, and take it
Speaker 1: to your house and bury it, depending on the time
Speaker 1: frame of when all this happens, and again where you live. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I looked up Georgia just out of curiosity,
Speaker 1: and I found a few little interesting tidbits. But one
Speaker 1: of them is that. And imagine it's like this. In
Speaker 1: a lot of states, embalming is is not a state law. Uh.
Speaker 1: Funeral directors do that because they have a body for
Speaker 1: you know, a period of time sometimes before the the
Speaker 1: actual burial or ceremony or whatever you're gonna do. So
Speaker 1: they inbalm for that reason. But you're not required by
Speaker 1: law to embalm a body. And if refrigeration is okay,
Speaker 1: But even if it's within a really short time span,
Speaker 1: you may not even have to refrigerate a body, right.
Speaker 1: Typically in states that allow you to take possession of
Speaker 1: the body yourself and handle a burial yourself as family,
Speaker 1: they usually say about twenty four hours. And actually I
Speaker 1: shouldn't even say about within twenty four hours. If you
Speaker 1: bury the body within twenty fours you don't have to
Speaker 1: embolve it. You don't have to refrigerate it. You can
Speaker 1: just again go to the hospital, put in your station wagon,
Speaker 1: bring it home and bury it. Probably, just to be smart,
Speaker 1: you should dig the whole first, dig the grave first,
Speaker 1: have it ready. It's not very cinematic, but sure, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it really is. And now that I think about, usually
Speaker 1: dig the hole with the body right there, you know,
Speaker 1: right exactly. And also, if you're gonna do this, just
Speaker 1: a little tip from us, like make sure that somebody
Speaker 1: can see you, and that they see you like nervously
Speaker 1: looking over your shoulder a lot. And maybe let's do
Speaker 1: this at like dusk or night time. Okay, right exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: And here's the thing you're also gonna have to be
Speaker 1: You're also gonna have to create an easement for your property.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean you have to pay like a
Speaker 1: a concrete path that leads to the grave, but it
Speaker 1: you do have to provide for some sort of future
Speaker 1: public access to that grape site, right exactly, like like
Speaker 1: it has to be on the d that that is
Speaker 1: a possibility. Um. There are some states who say no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the funeral directing lobby is far too powerful in our state.
Speaker 1: You have to hire a funeral director. UM. It varies
Speaker 1: on a spectrum of just how involved the funeral director
Speaker 1: has to be. In some states, the funeral director would
Speaker 1: have to take possession of the body or would at
Speaker 1: least have to file the death certificate. In other states
Speaker 1: it's like a total free for all, like you can
Speaker 1: handle all that, but you do have to file a
Speaker 1: death certificate, which from what this article says, I think
Speaker 1: Dave Ru's actually wrote this for on how stuff works. UM.
Speaker 1: He says that there are no funeral police, but they
Speaker 1: typically want you to um file it within I think
Speaker 1: five days of death. Um. But you just have to file.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that has to get done.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of stuff, a lot of responsibility
Speaker 1: you take on when a loved one dies and you say,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna bury him in the backyard. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: this was another little thing that I would never have
Speaker 1: thought about out or considered. Um. This is like a
Speaker 1: county clerk, so they have regular business hours. So if
Speaker 1: this happens at one on a Friday, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to file that certificate until Monday. But if
Speaker 1: you're a funeral director, you can party seven, right and
Speaker 1: just file it electronically, which I would guess would be
Speaker 1: the big advantage of working with the funeral director. And
Speaker 1: the best way to do this also if you're gonna
Speaker 1: handle it yourself, is to be waiting outside of the
Speaker 1: county clerk's office that when they show up the next
Speaker 1: morning and be covered in gore and grave dirt, waiting
Speaker 1: to file this death's death certificate and they're like, I
Speaker 1: gotta give my coffee first, mondays um, So bearing a
Speaker 1: body you always hear about, you know, six ft under
Speaker 1: that's the sort of rule of thumb. Um. That's actually
Speaker 1: not the law in most places, only New Mexico as
Speaker 1: far as the United States, where it's legal to bury
Speaker 1: about in your backyard require six ft um. New Jersey
Speaker 1: is four. It's astounding to me, but most states are
Speaker 1: between eighteen and that. But see that to me makes
Speaker 1: the most sense. Like six ft you're removing all the
Speaker 1: um body from a lot of the aerobic processes that
Speaker 1: happen in soil, right, So all you're doing is prolonging
Speaker 1: this decomposition where I guess if you're trying to decompose
Speaker 1: the body, shallow or grave is a better bet. But
Speaker 1: you're you're walking a balancing act here, Like you wanted
Speaker 1: to be shallow enough so that the soil is it's
Speaker 1: like part of the soil, but not so shallow that say, like, um,
Speaker 1: coyote is going to come along and be like, oh yes,
Speaker 1: and dig it up because you can smell it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which we have in our neighborhood. There are coyotes all
Speaker 1: over Atlanta. They're everywhere. Um. I have buried Laurent I
Speaker 1: feel like a couple of feet because I wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that he, like, the whole idea was that
Speaker 1: he became part of the land. And uh, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to dig any further than I'm being honest.
Speaker 1: That's when I hit that really hard clay pan. But
Speaker 1: you don't want a smell, And apparently eighteen thirty will
Speaker 1: take care of that. That's enough. That's that's what my
Speaker 1: dad always said. That's right. Um. And then so one
Speaker 1: of the other things, one of the last things is um,
Speaker 1: when you do this, you um are by definition your
Speaker 1: land becomes a cemetery. That's like you don't go in
Speaker 1: and say I need to file this little plot of
Speaker 1: land as a cemetery. Just the act of burying somebody
Speaker 1: legally on your land, that portion of your land because
Speaker 1: the cemetery, so it's it's protected by all sorts of
Speaker 1: um you know laws and anti desecration laws and cemetery
Speaker 1: laws and actually these laws like go back to Roman
Speaker 1: times from what from what I saw, UM. But to
Speaker 1: do that you need to file it with your UM.
Speaker 1: There's usually like a cemetery or some sort of commission
Speaker 1: that keeps track of all the graves in the town
Speaker 1: and and has some giant book. Yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the cool this thing. It's a giant book, the black
Speaker 1: book covered in dust with gold leafing all around it,
Speaker 1: and when you open it it makes a giant echoe
Speaker 1: thud when you open it. It does wow when you
Speaker 1: open it. In the you know, down the middle, let's
Speaker 1: say I got to yeah, yeah, and then a creaky
Speaker 1: old finger with a yellow fingernail runs down until it's
Speaker 1: the spot where they're going to enter your name in
Speaker 1: blood and says, excellent, Well, let's sit huh. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: all I got. It's uh, it's an interesting option, that's
Speaker 1: all I'm gonna say. Yeah. Maybe if you're thinking of
Speaker 1: doing this, look into all the laws first, agreed. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us on short stuff.
Speaker 1: This is the end of this short stuff. Stuff you
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