Hi Norman, being a NZer all my ancestors were EU, mostly French and English and Irish and Norwegian but it doesn't count. They must be my parents for it to apply. Doesn't go back as far as Great Grandparents or further back. This is a subject I have researched assiduously for 4 years. Sigh!
Knowing my luck my eyeball would be up my ****!
Terry, I have been talking to my next-door neighbour who is also the Maire. Yes there is a time span of just three days, and it is compulsory to advise the Mairie of your death! I had a laugh over that one as it loses a bit in translation! Apparently the Maire must sign the Death Certificate and I think take on the details of body removal etc. There is a Civil Code that covers this apparently.
I think I will peg out in the garden so he can see me lying, sitting there!
Hmm, interesting comments. Yes I could will myself to be munted about in a hospital. Doesn't seem very tranquil but as you point out I wouldn't have to worry about it. Must get my head around that as few of my organs are worth donating, even now.
You have to be resident in NZ to be a NZ resident so I have no right to a pension or the vote. Crazy and unfair I know. Marrying a Frenchman to get citizenship isn't an option as you must be married at least 4 years before applying and stay married some indeterminate number of years thereafter. Otherwise, if your partner dies your citizenship is revoked. This is to stop white weddings.
Interested in the new 'treatment' you mention, so long as it's eco. Hope it arrives soon.
Doreen, I am almost 75 now and have been just about incoherent in French and English most of my life. About 20 years ago I collapsed in Paris just walking down the street. I honestly thought I had been shot, and emergency services came and swept me up and took me to hospital where they diagnosed kidny stones - they felt more like boulders with jagged edges!
When I was treated and left to go home, my wife phoned the hospital to find out what had happened. The doctor was very surprised and said 'didn't your husband explain?' When she said I only had minmal French, he said 'you surprise me as he was fluent when he was here!'
Amazing what you can dredge up when terrified!
Frances, I just had a thought. Have you any ancestors that were from the now EU - usually Britain but others now? You might find that a short-cut to getting EU citizenship.
As I say just a thought.
Frances I think my throwaway line of 'nobody gets left on top' is actually true.
I believe that it is also possible to leave your body to science, and also if there are useful organs that can be of use to others hospitals can also have your body provided you Will it so. Every major hospital has a Funerarium I am also advised, where those who die in the hospital without relatives and/or reseources are also disposed of.
Just a point why are you no longer a NZ resident if you have family there? I thought that was a main point of residency.
Re. not being EU - is your boyfriend EU? If so it might be a thought to get married, although I believe even that is not necessary these days.
Finally I was advised that there is a new, upcoming treatment that scientifcally reduces the body to component elements, which are then recycled which seems a very good idea, but I don't know anything further about it.
Finally, finally, I would suggest that you don't worry about it as you will be out of it, so why stress yourself?
Hi Doreen -- We cremated my MiL a couple of years back. Following her strict instructions -- in fact she said leave my body on the top of a hill and let the animals have it ! -- we told the funeral director to organise the most basic operation possible. No representative of any religion, the most basic coffin etc etc -- she would have been outraged at what she would have considered a total waste of money! The total cost was €2,800 and that would have been a couple of hundred less were it not for the fact that the nearest crematorium was more than two hours drive away. So that, I reckon, is the cheapest you will find given that we weren't in a big town paying big-town prices. One thing I discovered is that there are very strict time limits. I forget what they were but it's a matter of days. We have already organised our departure by taking out a "convention obseques" so our son will just have to call the number we've given him and all will be done and paid for according to our written instructions.
If the thought of growing old in Uk looked alluring or remotely tolerable I
imagine that I would still be there now.
Can not close my eyes and ears to the news about UK care homes.....and, indeed
the NHS and how it treats older people.
There are, of course exceptions....I appreciate that....but life is far too precious
to be part of a possibility.
If you are very wealthy you can possibly be part of the exception and build a wall and
a metaphoric moat around you but here the cost of a real walled garden is possible
for most people and the freedom to eat naturally and die the same way....is possible.
If the deceased has no funds then the costs are born by the commune. See
http://obseques.comprendrechoisir.com/comprendre/aides-frais-obseques
This question is in my mind from time to time but it's not quite as simple as your topic suggests.
I have no idea where on this planet I will be buried, so I can't make real plans, though I feel I should. It's hard to make up my mind because the political sand shifts all the time.
My life is in France but I have no legal right to stay here, well, alive anyway, so I don't know what will happen if something suddenly kills me. I have no next of kin here, just my aging boyfriend who is currently battling cancer (hopefully successfully). I have no money for a plot and no idea what happens to me at the end of my contract next year. I'm not EU, though I hope to stay long enough to go through the naturalisation process (lengthy and no guarantee of a positive outcome) in the years to come, assuming I can find work the government agrees with. I honestly don't know what to do.
Back in NZ I had decided I wanted an eco funeral - no toxic embalming, just let me rot in a plywood box buried not too deep so the wildlife can benefit from me and so too the tree planted above me. This option is a real one in NZ. Here in France I am told this does not exist. The pollution created by cremation can be appalling, even with filters. I prefer the planet to slowly benefit and detoxify my atoms.
Flying me back to NZ? Someone would have to pay for that and embalm me or I'd be pretty ghastly by the time I got there. Where would I go? Would there be a funeral? The cemetery where my first daughter and my father are buried was damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes, and I'm no longer a NZ resident, don't even have the right to a pension or the vote. My mother has nothing but her clothes and lives in a retirement home. She's suffering from dementia. She can't remember much from one sentence to the other.
Well, a can of worms, this question. What happens to dead people like me? I have no idea. Can someone enlighten me?
I have just recently gone through the costing process of a funeral here, and I assume but can't remember if it included a plot. I wasn't looking for it for as far as I am concerned they can throw me on the municpal tip! Costs incuding religious ceremony and casket -( bloody box why don't they say so?) ranges from about €3500 up to anything as far as I can tell. Depends if you want the band of Brigade of Guards or something.
Cheapest was cremation, no religious ceremony and no urn - presumably a paper bag? at that came in at about €1800.
Still a lot of loot for unwanted garbage (in my case only folks) isn't it? Mind you I've never heard of anybody being left 'on top' have you? I think we should recall that funerals are nothing to do the the dead person but everything to do with those remaining.
I am one of the really lucky ones, that I honestly can't think of anyone except a couple of mates in Australia who will even lift a drink in my direction when I pop off - let alone shed any tears.
I think this is good as I can't find any reason in my head as to why I should bugger up anybody's days by simply leaving the scene.
However, for those of you who think differently I came across this the other day so I pass it on;
ASCENSION
And if I go while you're still here
Know that I live on, vibrating to a different measure - behind a thin veil you cannot see through.
You will not see me so you must have faith.
I wait for the time when we can soar together again - both aware of each other.
Until then live your life to the fullest, and when you need me, just whisper my name in your heart,
.....I will be there.
1989 Colleen Corah Hancock
Frightened the life out of SWMBO when I read that to her!!!!
Fair assumption Peter
.....bet Hartlepool lost tho' !
Hi again Doreen - no raw nerves touched here. I lost my lovely lady about 18 months ago, she was only 56. She wanted to be cremated and she always expressed a wish to have her ashes scattered in France where she spent the last 25 years of her life and Fraserburgh where she was brought up. I had to sign a document stating the ONE place where the ashes were to be scattered. I decided to put Fraserburgh as I had to make a choice. Acoording to the document the law says the ashes must be scattered within one year of the service. It is an offence to keep the ashes any longer than one year. apparently ! I have never heard of anyone being 'visited' by an 'Ashes Control Squad' or similar so I assume it's not a hanging offence !
I suppose you could say i am am one of the lucky ones that went but came back thanks to the ambulance crew at the time after a serious accident in 1976 .One of the local expats recently passed away through illness and suddenly half the expat community want to return to the UK where as previously none had ever wished to do so , comments such as i don't want to be left here on my own or i don't want to go into a French care home, my wife being one of them. Whereas i came here for the duration it appears when the time is deemed suitable i am to be uprooted and moved back much against my will regardless of how much i scweem and scweem . I wanted my ashes scattered along with all my dogs ashes at the very top of our field where we used to sit and look down the whole valley .Threats of haunting those responsible for my forced abduction have fallen on deaf ears
Doreen, purely practical point of view. My dad died here in a car crash in 1991. We (my mum & I) because of the shear shock of it all, handed everything over to the local funeral director and he took it from there. He sorted out a plot and a burial and although we are not particularly religious, a British vicar turned up and said some words. I still to this day do not know how that happened, but his words were good and I can sincerely say they helped us.
I think the plot was 2.000 Francs, but not entirely sure.
So my dad is now buried in St Adjutory, the plot is, I believe, for 75 years (nearly twice as much as the poor old bugger ever lived), but he seems happy, he hasn't moved yet.
I've gone from the practical to the ridiculous, but I miss the old man.
Up side is, my son was born 50 years to the day my dad was, so they share a birthday although they never met and coincidence on coincidence, dad's time of death was 8.25pm and my sons time of birth was 8.25pm. The world does move in mysterious ways.
The Stade de France opened it's doors for the first time and France beat Spain 1-0, I remember because the surgeon was watching it as I was trying to keep hold of a baby.
I mentioned that I am making plans...ah not for that time but for the time before when
we downsize.
I understood what you meant Doreen...
But there are always people departing.
With you Doreen but at the same time whilst bereavement is a hard time for very many people and that is respected, I think we are all just being realistic since ultimately we do all have the same fate and it is thus refreshing to see how sane and sober people are about it. Those of us who are pushing on and especially some of us who have been close have all probably thought about the initial question here. I certainly did.
We shall forgive you that final sin, but that is a nice place to have ashes scattered indeed. I wouldn't mind being scattered outside the Free Press pub given I went there the day it reopened in 1978 and have revisited it many times. Kind of my spirit following my purse ;-)
If scattering it is to be, then perhaps in a particular part of the Andes that was part of my life for many years where I left boyhood behind and grew into manhood that I have never been back to since the late 1980s but have always intended to and promised myself I would at least once.