A friend used to work for a funeral home. One customer asked them to spread his ashes in the sky, so they rented a Cherokee Six. Bone chips blasted all the paint off the left stabilator!
There are so many stories of scattering ashes from planes, and I don't think any I've heard of ended well...
About a year ago it was a nice day but windy. My Fisher stalls at about 30mph so naturally I avoid windy days, but it was forecast to drop down to almost nothing in the afternoon. Figured I'd go up to the airport after lunch, see how it looked, and do a few minor things to the plane while seeing how the winds were going. By the time I finished puttering around and preflighting, the winds were a lot calmer with only the occasional sharp gust coming through, AWOS was calling something like 9 knots with peak gust 14, so I went ahead and took off. Got thrashed as soon as I was airborne, but I headed south to the shoreline where the air was smooth as silk in the sea breeze, and had a delightful cruise along the beach at 500' for an hour and a half or so hoping it would settle down as forecast before heading back to the airport, which on a hilltop about 10 miles inland.
When I was a few miles out, I switched to the AWOS and it was reporting 17 knots, peak gust 24 variable between straight down the runway and dead cross

(that's the Oh s*** moment). Figured a wheel landing on the grass was my best bet, came down final with occasional full aileron deflection to keep the greasy side down, and just as I rounded out, a gust slammed me and I hit hard, hard enough that the plane wasn't sitting level on the taxi back to the hangar.
Only took a few weeks to get the repaired landing gear and lower wings back on the plane... I have a much healthier appreciation for my plane's wind limits now... :emb:
Dana