Recently my father called me to make the following announcement:

“I’ve decided that I’m going to be buried toe-to-toe with Lester Davis — and I’m immensely happy about it,” he said.

Lester Davis is my father’s best friend.

“But you mustn’t say anything to Zohra about this,” my father added.

Zohra is his wife.

My father is in perfect health, so the phone call prompted no immediate alarm, but it did make me think that my father can’t be the only one with surprising plans for his ideal forever.

The example set by Jeremy Bentham, the 18th-century English philosopher, might be considered truly avant-garde. Mr. Bentham asked that his head be embalmed and fixed on top of his skeleton, which was to be dressed in his own black suit and placed in a glass case, “in the attitude in which I am sitting when engaged in thought,” as he put it.