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Burial arrangements is a periodic topic of dinner conversation in our family. It's not that we're morbid or anything; we talk about this like we would about rising gas prices or the neighbor's annoying dogs. Our parents who are neither sick nor dying, the practical people that they are, have already picked out plots for themselves. I heard that my brother has made it known that he wants to be cremated too. I don't know his reasons. I'd ask but I haven't seen him in 10 years and he hardly ever calls. He's always in the middle of this ocean or that ocean most of the time. My Mom is religious and worries about the Church's stand on cremation but I don't particularly care about what the Church does or doesn't approve and I have a feeling neither does my brother. They probably suspect this already, judging from the absence of any real protest on their part. And as for my sister, she simply says that she's not going to die.