Wishes Upon My Demise

Ideally I’ll persist till old age with my full mental and physical faculties, but that isn’t guaranteed. Death will eventually take me, as it takes all, though I cannot offer any suggestion as to how.

I think it is important to accept the inevitability of death and make plans accordingly, rather than deny it and leave others to make difficult decisions potentially not aligned with one’s true desires. This document intends to outline my wishes post death and provide my wishes regarding assisted dying.

Euthanasia

I care deeply about how I think – about agency, clarity, curiosity, and creativity. If those are gone, then I am gone. Especially if I am brain dead; I am dead. Kill me.

My biggest fear in life is a degenerative disease that slowly takes me, so in the event of motor neurone disease (MND), Alzheimer’s, dementia, or similar, I have intent to pursue voluntary assisted dying.

In the event of degenerative disease, I may show moments of lucidity or my old self, but these will not be representative and shouldn’t be taken as reasons to prolong my suffering.

I support the right to voluntary assisted dying or equivalent options where suffering outweighs existence. I will take that option. I’d rather go early while still somewhat myself than late, after I’m gone in everything but name.

If medical science ever advances to the point where my mind could be restored or repaired, then I’d like to pursue that, but otherwise, don’t freeze me, tube me, or preserve me just for the idea of potential. I’m undecided on my preference regarding whole brain emulation, so I wish to opt-out.

Donate My Organs

I am a registered organ donor in Australia and would like my organs to be donated as first priority upon my death.

If necessary, mangle my body to get my organs out. Please do not allow my organs or any other useful part of my body to be wasted for the sake of preserving my appearance or structure. My body without me is a resource and should be reaped as such.

Don’t Bury Me

When I die, I don’t want my body to be buried with any permanency. It is a waste of space on the surface of this planet. Ideally my remains following any potential organ donation will be donated to science or medical research, ¹ but otherwise it should be subject to cremation, resomation, promession, or being pushed off a jetty.

I also wouldn’t take issue with a mushroom burial suit as long as I don’t have a marked grave plot taking up space. That kinda defeats the point. The matter that makes up my form has been other things before and will be other things after.

Funeral

I’m not particularly bothered with a funeral, but if you’d like one to take place, please keep it extremely simple. Do not spend large amounts of money or time to organise and host a funeral for me.

I do not believe in an afterlife or any form of definitive moral judgement system by some greater power, such as sins and good deeds leading to heaven/hell.

If you hold a funeral for me, don’t do it at a church, and please don’t include any religious representation – perhaps excluding the Pastafarians, who are sure to be a good time. Otherwise, I don’t want a clergy anywhere near any remembrance of me.

If you need a musical playlist, here are my requests:

• Where Youth And Laughter Go - Broadcast
• Rises The Moon - Liana Flores
• I Just Can’t Be Happy Today - Machine Gun Etiquette
• My Way - Frank Sinatra
• Where’d All The Time Go - Dr Dog

Let People Know

If possible, please post a notice of my death on the social media pages linked in this site’s footer and in a micro post, as applicable.

Please include my name, place of death, time of death, cause of death, and any other relevant information. For cause of death especially, please be specific. I do not want anyone to be left without knowledge or closure regarding my death.

You may also use the aforementioned channels to advertise any funeral or memorial as seen fit.

Preserving Vale.Rocks

This site should be my legacy. I have documented its hosting and deployment on this website and its repository’s README.md, which should be referenced. Please renew my domain (vale.rocks) regularly for the maximum possible term and make sure everything is backed up to the Internet Archive.

By design, this site depends minimally on external dependencies and resources and is built close to the web platform such that it should remain usable for as long as browsers maintain backwards compatibility.

All my writing and photography on this site, as well as the code for the site itself, shall be dedicated to the public domain after my death has been confirmed. I give permission to modify the footer to reflect this change in licensing.

Otherwise, please do not modify this site beyond ensuring it is still available for access. Acceptable alterations would include server migrations and minor updates to ensure dependencies keep working as they do at the time of death. Unacceptable alterations would include publishing new content or rewriting code to make the site adaptive to new platforms.

Copyright and Ownership

Any and all of my content published externally to this site should remain under the same licences it did prior to my death, unless otherwise noted.

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I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

— Douglas Adams

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

— Hunter S Thompson

I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.

— Daniel Keyes

死は生の一部であ. Back to the void I shall return. To /dev/null I shall go.

Footnotes

1. If my body ends up at some medical school or the likes, students are welcome to play with it. ↩