Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[Image:Susan Haile gravestone 1.JPG|thumb|An 1852 gravesite on the [[Oregon Trail]].]]
{{quote|"Lay my soul, lay my pride, where my people fought and died. Bury me 'neath the killing fields."|Roma Di Luna, ''[http://www.romadiluna.com/audio/ROMA_DI_LUNA-Bury_Me_Beneath-clip-0-120.m3u Bury Me 'Neath the Killing Fields]''}}
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== [[Anime]] ==
* ''[[Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service|The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service]]'' manga is about a group who do just this. Doesn't matter if you're dead
* ''[[Martian Successor Nadesico]]'' has fun with this trope in an early episode. Employees of [[Evil Corporation|Nergal]] who die on the job are entitled to whatever peculiar funeral they want. When a company space station explodes a few episodes in, the only official nearby to perform all the funerals is the captain of the titular ship. After the mass funerals for Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, and shooting-star-teddy-bear religion employees, there are still hundreds of unique funerals to perform.
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* In the movie ''[[S.O.B.]]'', the central characters decide their friend deserves better than a Hollywood funeral full of phonies, so they steal his body from the funeral home and give him a Viking burial (put on a burning boat and sent out to sea).
* This is also the plot of the German movie ''[[Die Oma Ist Tot]]''. Grandma wants to be buried next to her husband in Poland, but dies on a family visit in Germany. As the transport costs are too high, the family tries to smuggle her across the border... in a surfboard box.
* This is a [[MacGuffin]] in the movie ''Stealing Home''. [[Mrs. Robinson]] figure Katie (played by Jodie Foster) commits suicide and leaves her ashes to Billy, played by Mark Harmon. Her vague instructions that "he will know what to do" with her remains set a [[Vision Quest]] in motion, as Billy reminisces about their relationship, his youth, and his lost potential as a ballplayer and a human being. He finally scatters her ashes off the [[Horse Jump|diving horse pier]] in Atlantic City, where Katie had often fantasized about flying to a faraway land.
== [[Literature]] ==
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* ''The Mary Gloster'' by [[Rudyard Kipling]] is a poem entirely consisting of the narrator's instructions to his son as to how he is to be buried (at sea, and it's going to be a BIG chore).
* Another poetic example: ''The Cremation of Sam McGee''. Except he sort of gets better.
* In [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s ''[[Time Enough for Love]]'', Lazarus Long tries to give Libby the cremation he requested, by letting him burn up de-orbiting into Earth. Problem is, he dies on the other side of the galaxy, but thankfully corpses keep well in space. Long sets up the body in an orbit around the planet where Libby died, knowing he can always come back later when it's possible to get to Earth and retrieve the body. Oddly enough someone steals it before he can come back, and even odder it turns out to be Lazarus himself. ([[Time Travel]] is fun like that). However, in ''[[Number of the Beast]]'' we discover that he steals Libby's corpse a ''second'' time so they can recapture his DNA and memories and ''clone'' him, this time [[Opposite
* In ''[[Lonesome Dove]]'' Woodrow Call brings Gus MacCrae's body across the country so he can be buried in his favourite orchard.
* In Polidori's ''[[The Vampyre]]'', Lord Ruthven invokes this trope to ensure his corpse will be exposed to moonlight, which he knows [[Our Vampires Are Different|will revive him in undeath]].
* Early on in ''[[Vorkosigan Saga|The Warrior's Apprentice]]'', Sergeant Bothari tells Miles that if he dies he doesn't want to be buried in space, but to be returned to Barrayar, where he has been promised a place in the Vorkosigan family cemetery, at the feet of the place reserved for Miles' mother. Needless to say, this {{spoiler|turns out to be foreshadowing, or maybe [[Chekhov's Gun|Chekhov's dying wish]]}}.
* Played with in [[Amy Tan]]'s ''Saving Fish from Drowning''. [[Posthumous Narration|Narrator Bibi Chen]] laments that her joke about wanting to be buried in a particular antique Chinese coffin (she was an art dealer) was taken seriously by her friends. She goes on to say that her actual wish was to be cremated, her ashes put into several valuable containers, and each container given to a different friend, the idea being that the friends would take her ashes somewhere interesting and scatter them, then keep the boxes as a memento.
* In ''Cold Sassy Tree'', Rucker Blakeslee leaves behind specific instructions regarding the disposal of his remains: he wants to be buried immediately, in a plain pine box lined in burlap, without a church service or any clergymen present, though he asks that his grandson recite some Scripture. Then, a bit later, he wants [[The Fun in Funeral|a party "like them Irishmen have."]] Since the book takes place in Georgia (the US state) in 1906, these directions are extremely contrary to the norm, and cause a lot of heartache for his family. They do it anyway.
* Kaspar and company use this as their cover story in ''Exile's Return'' by [[Raymond E. Feist]]. They are trying to bring a magical set of armour back home for the wizards to study. To avoid attracting the attention of thieves, they put it in a coffin and claim that the coffin contains the body of their deceased leader, which they are bringing home for burial.
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* An episode of ''[[Northern Exposure]]'' revolves around Maurice and Holling trying to do this for a deceased hunting buddy of theirs.
* On ''[[The George Lopez Show]]'', there was an episode where his mother-in-law, Emelina, dies. Emelina is buried in a burial plot next to where Angie and George had bought theirs. Unfortunately, George only bought one extra plot, so Angie would have no place to go.
* Averted on ''[[Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman]]''. Miss Olive's will specifically states that her body actually be buried on the lone prairie rather than carted hither and yon.
* In the ''[[QI]]'' episode "Gothic", certain Ghanaian funeral customs involving customized coffins are discussed in these terms.
* In the ''[[Only Fools and Horses]]'' episode "Ashes to Ashes", Del Boy and Rodney spend the entire episode trying to find an appropriate way to dispose of the ashes of Trigger's grandfather (so they can flog off the urn he is in). After all of their attempts are thwarted, the ashes are accidentally sucked up by a road sweeper. They decide this is appropriate as Trigger's grandfather had been a street sweeper.
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== [[Real Life]] ==
* Singer Gram Parsons requested he be cremated at the Joshua Tree National Monument. His manager stole his corpse from the morgue to do so.
* And then there's James Doohan, Scotty from ''[[Star Trek: The
** Somehow, a ''malfunctioning'' spacecraft seems more appropriate for the man behind Scotty than one where everything goes smoothly.
* Other people's ashes have been taken into space as well, most notably Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and astronaut Gordon Cooper.
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[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
[[Category:Plots]]
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