FORGET THE COFFIN: Here are 13 better things do to with your dead body

Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Death isn't cool. It can happen anytime, anywhere to anyone. And it doesn't wait around for you to cross those last few items off your bucket list before dragging you unceremoniously to that great, big junkyard in the sky.

But what if death wasn't the end? What if there was a way to use your lifeless remains to orbit the Earth. Or become, say, a fireworks display. Or a paperweight.

Here are some of the craziest ways you can use death as an opportunity to become something awesome.


Death is no fun. But shooting stuff can be. If you sacrifice just one pound of your ashes, Holy Smoke will fill 250 bullets for your loved ones to do gosh knows what with. If the recipient is a sharp-enough shooter, maybe you'll have a few furry friends to join you in the afterlife.

The only thing better than jamming out to that perfect tune is jamming out to that perfect tune on a record pressed with the ashes of a loved one. Vinyly will press your ashes into your favorite record so you can live forever in the song of your choosing. You can even record your own audio if you want. Or, if you're feeling a little creepy, you can leave the record blank, so when the needle drops, nothing but pops and crackles of your cremated remains will fill the room.

Death (and $12,500) might just buy you a ticket into space. A program called Celestis will hitch your ashes to a space shuttle and launch them into the great beyond. If you want, you can take a short trip into space before returning back to Earth. Or, you can book a one-way ticket and spend the rest of your (infinite) days floating in deep space, orbiting the Earth, or even hanging out on the surface of the moon.

Baby, you're a firework. Well, you could be at least. A few different companies, including Heavens Above Fireworks, will mix your ashes with explosive powder to create spectacular fireworks displays. You can choose from a few different packages, painting the sky with all the bursts and bangs of your glorious life as your ashes rain down on your friends and family (and that tray of hot dogs on the picnic table).

Death is forever. And so are diamonds. So why not combine the two? LifeGem will compress your ashes into beautiful (and expensive) bling.

LifeGem will separate the carbon from your ashes. Then they will heat it to intense temperatures, converting it into graphite. Next, LifeGem recreates the crazy heat and pressure generated by the earth to compress the graphite into a diamond for your loved ones to wear (or pawn).

You know what else is (mostly) forever? Tattoos.

Tattoo artists can sterilize your ashes and mix them into tattoo ink, so that you can live forever beneath the skin of your loved ones. So, if someone you know is dedicated enough to get your face etched into their body, you should ask them to turn it up a notch and throw a little pinch of your cremated remains into the mix.

You can never have enough pencils. No matter how many you have, for some reason, when you need one the most you can't find any of them.

English product designer Nadine Jarvis created The Carbon Copies project to change the way we look at pencils — by filling them with our loved ones' remains.

When you die, your ashes will feed a box of 240 pencils, each stamped with your name. Each box contains a built-in sharpener to store the shavings, so that even when the pencils are ground down to the eraser, your family will have a weird, pencil-box urn to remember you by.

They'll probably also feel a little bit more obligated to keep track of the pencils, since they're made with your ashes and all.

It's always nice to have a portrait of a deceased loved one. Every time you look at it, you remember them, and it feels like, somehow, they're still with you.

Some artists will actually mix your cremated remains with their paint to give new meaning to memorial portraits. So, you can tell your loved ones that if it sometimes feels like you're still with them, you actually still are a little bit — forever embedded in the grains of the canvas hanging above their stairs.

So you have run out of time in life. But even after you die the clock keeps ticking. Now what? Companies like Lifetime Hourglass Urns give you the opportunity to pour your ashes into an hourglass, and you can be a constant reminder to everyone, still alive, of the cruel, relentless passage of time.

Snow globe collections just got a bit creepier. Companies like Bull Works offer to sprinkle your ashes into a snow globe. They promise that your ashes will "come alive with your loved one's caress and freely float joyfully within their personal globe of heavenly tears."

Can't say it better than that.

Nothing softens the hard blow of death like a soft, cuddly animal. Huggable Urns will stuff your ashes into the belly of an adorable teddy bear so your loved ones can squeeze and hug you to their hearts' content. It's probably a lot more satisfying than hugging an urn.

Why not use your death as an opportunity to give back to the planet? Eternal Reefs will turn your ashes into an artificial reef where coral can grow underwater. And you can spend the rest of time on Earth chilling with fishes as twirls of seaweed brush peacefully against you.

Or, you can give back to the earth by becoming a tree! Bios Urn is a completely biodegradable urn that contains a special capsule that allows a tree or plant to grow from your cremated remains. You can rise from the ashes like a phoenix. Except as a tree.

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