I don't recall this topic being discussed before on dr1.
Sooner or later for all of us, there comes a time when our body is an empty shell. So what to do with it. For many people there is a funeral, a burial (or ashes in an urn) in an area we consider home.
But what if you are an expatriate living in the Dominican Republic? Shipping the body back to their home area is a possibility, but this is very expensive, costing thousands of dollars, and the survivors may well need the money for other things. Also, where to send it? For many expatriates, there no longer is a particular place that they consider to be "home", and their family is scattered. Cremation is apparently not yet an option in the DR, at least when a friend of mine who wanted his ashes scattered on the Bay of Samana died, it was necessary to send his body to Puerto Rico for cremation. A very expensive process with much red tape. And being put in a wooden box, driven through the streets on the back of a pickup truck and buried within 24 hours as is the practice in the DR is also not a good option for an expat far from family and without enough friends to make a respectable funeral parade.
While I was living in Samana, a friend, who was in his 70s and had a bad heart, answered the question by giving his body to a medical school for use as a cadavar. He contacted a medical school, made an agreement, and had it notarized at the American Embassy in Santo Domingo. The day he died, a friend called the medical school, which sent a truck to pick up the body. To me, that seemed like a pretty good option for an expatriate pondering the question of what to do with the body after death.
I have also wondered whether there is need in the DR for bodies that can be stripped of parts that might be of use by others. The trade off would be that when all the usable parts had been removed that what was left would be buried or otherwise disposed of by the medical facility taking the parts.
What do those of you with knowledge of medical needs and practices in the DR think of these two options? Is one better than the other? How would an expat considering one or the other go about arranging it?
Is there a better option than any of those mentioned?
Sooner or later for all of us, there comes a time when our body is an empty shell. So what to do with it. For many people there is a funeral, a burial (or ashes in an urn) in an area we consider home.
But what if you are an expatriate living in the Dominican Republic? Shipping the body back to their home area is a possibility, but this is very expensive, costing thousands of dollars, and the survivors may well need the money for other things. Also, where to send it? For many expatriates, there no longer is a particular place that they consider to be "home", and their family is scattered. Cremation is apparently not yet an option in the DR, at least when a friend of mine who wanted his ashes scattered on the Bay of Samana died, it was necessary to send his body to Puerto Rico for cremation. A very expensive process with much red tape. And being put in a wooden box, driven through the streets on the back of a pickup truck and buried within 24 hours as is the practice in the DR is also not a good option for an expat far from family and without enough friends to make a respectable funeral parade.
While I was living in Samana, a friend, who was in his 70s and had a bad heart, answered the question by giving his body to a medical school for use as a cadavar. He contacted a medical school, made an agreement, and had it notarized at the American Embassy in Santo Domingo. The day he died, a friend called the medical school, which sent a truck to pick up the body. To me, that seemed like a pretty good option for an expatriate pondering the question of what to do with the body after death.
I have also wondered whether there is need in the DR for bodies that can be stripped of parts that might be of use by others. The trade off would be that when all the usable parts had been removed that what was left would be buried or otherwise disposed of by the medical facility taking the parts.
What do those of you with knowledge of medical needs and practices in the DR think of these two options? Is one better than the other? How would an expat considering one or the other go about arranging it?
Is there a better option than any of those mentioned?
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