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Your last remains, for lots of people, mean more to their loved ones than they do to the deceased. I was reading about how when the U.S. Secretary of State is in North Korea he will try to get them to release about 200-last remains of American military who died during the Korean War, which ended 65-years ago, and there are American families who really want those remains. It means a lot to them.
But an unclaimed corpse, especially the homeless here in the U.S., are often donated to medical schools, buried in a mass grave with other unclaimed bodies, or cremated; depending on the policy of the locale, city, county, etc. Because they are the ones who foot the bill if the body is unclaimed, there are no private means available, or they may not have cremation facilities available, so they may only have one way of disposing of unclaimed bodies in their jurisdiction.
I have worked in outlying rural areas in towns that only had a very small hospital, or no hospital at all, and the funeral home was in the next town over. The nearest medical school was 150 or more miles away, and families had no money to transport the body of a loved one, so they left it up to the local town government's policy to dispose of the body.
Unless you have left a means for disposing of your body, the disposal of your last remains may not be up to you. Most probably it was not the wish of those American Korean War military members to have their last remains stay in North Korea for 65-years after their death, but like I said, their remains most likely mean more to their surviving loved ones, and our country, than it probably meant for some of them.
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