What would you want buried with you so you could use it in the afterlife?

I thought the question might invoke some humour.

It is a crazy practice - the use of valuable land to fill vast necropoli.

But I don't think we have found an adequate solution for dealing with dead bodies yet. Cremation is incredibly costly in energy and puts a disproportionate amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. 

Many people don't know that cremated ashes have an excess of sodium which causes deficiencies in essential nutrients in the soil, rendering it infertile. Human ashes also damage the fish and vegetation in rivers, lakes and coastlines in spots where many are attracted to throw their ashes. Also they are very high in calcium. If spread on soils, they change the pH of the soil - can be okay if used very sparingly on an already alkaline soil.

I would like to be buried on my own land, no placque or marker, just in a shroud, and have an avocado tree planted on top of me. This post was edited by inky at June 2, 2020 6:29 AM MDT

My initial response to your question was humor, but the more I considered it, the less humor I found in it. As a combat vet, death is seldom a subject of levity for me. So kudos for at least seeding the process. 

Something occurred to me about your poignant points on the chemical sins of cremation. It is still a truism that most living things either die by being eaten by something else, or their bodies are consumed post mortem. Not us, though. We’ve removed our kind from the so-called Circle of Life. “Vast necropoli“ are the residual products of that.   

We recently lost my father in law, who was laid to rest in a Veteran’s cemetery. I was given pause to observe the thousands of graves there, and contemplate how each little box of air and human remains (and untold heartfelt mementos) will be “down there” for something on the order of millions of years. What becomes of those grounds 500, 1000, 5000 years from now? 
 It’s disturbing. 

Hello Don Barzini..
That is a very significant point of discussion, the vast, I feel wasted land that has been dedicated to mans vanity and need for immortality, even if that immortality only lives through a headstone.
The connection I have to loved ones who have passed is not found at a gravesite, I find it in my heart and in my memories. My Grandfather was a great influence in my life. He passed before my children were born, but my children are well aware of the importance he held in my life, they know his history and they have heard countless stories of his life, stories they will tell their children I am sure. That, to me is immortality, What he was still lives some 3 generations later. We do not need a marker to know this.
In the bay Area, where I live, there is a town called Colma ( an area of South San Francisco). This towns 'claim to fame' is that it contains more dead people than living persons. It has a graveyard for every Nationality and religion, there are even some large pet cemeteries.
There was a great little Golf course there, woven between many cemeteries. It was a par 72 consisting of 9 holes with different tee box's.
So you would play the same hole on the 1st and the 10th but with the tee box layout, they played differently. After a time the cemeteries started to encroach on the course, so par 5's became par 4's, everything else became par 3's. This continued until the course completely closed and now the entire property is composed of grave sites.
For me, clearly the city had its priorities a bit skewed..I liked the golf course much better..

Yes, Designer, man’s vanity. The source of so many of the world's ills. The gift that keeps on giving. 
I make no secret of my unabashed atheism, to me, the premise of preserving our remains in earthly graves to await a “call to the afterlife“ is the pinnacle of human vanity.  

Hey! Hypothetically, wouldn't it be astounding if we could take photos of the afterlife and send them back across the divide for the living to see?
How might proof change the way people behave?

There should be an app for that! ;P

As it happens, I don't believe in any kind of afterlife either - but I thought it would be a fun thing to speculate on.
I agree that the only real afterlife is this physical world here and now, which continues after we have died.

If I remember correctly, you have worked hard and earned and created a great lifestyle in a beautiful environment.
I imagine your kids will do very well as a result of what they learned from you and what you bequeath them.

Sounds like you enjoy the life you have - congratulations - not many achieve that! :)