Why did Dustin Diamond prefer cremation? Actor wanted to be 'left in peace' as he feared headstone vandalism
Actor Dustin Diamond did not want to be buried with a gravestone and instead wanted to be cremated after he died, as he was afraid of people vandalizing the tombstone and wanted to be "left in peace," his close friend revealed.
Dan Block, who met Diamond after hiring him to do commercials for his firm Insurance King, told The Sun that the 'Saved By The Bell' star didn't want to have a headstone that "people can mess with." Diamond died on Monday, February 1, just weeks after being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and Block was there by his side when he died.
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"He wants to be cremated, he did not want to have a gravestone and he did not want to have a big funeral so it's just going to be a memorial with a few family and friends. He said he didn't want to have a gravestone because he was worried people would mess with it just like they messed with him when he was alive. He just wants to be left in peace to leave the world. I think I might do a plaque because he filmed at one of my locations, so maybe I'll put something there, so that if somebody wanted to go and see something they could. But he was clear he didn't want a gravestone. This all just happened so fast we thought we had months," Block said.
Despite claiming that he never smoked cigarettes, Diamond was hospitalized and diagnosed with stage four small cell carcinoma in January. It was reported that his cancer was terminal just hours before he died. Block mentioned previously that Diamond was subject to constant public ridicule both in-person and online, which prevented him from getting treatment earlier. He avoided going to the hospital to seek treatment for a "huge lump" on his neck in case people took photos and posted them online.
Block said Diamond's friends tried their best to surround him with positivity. "He stayed away from any negative stuff in his last days," Dan added. "That's why I was collecting the mail and making sure he's got some positive stuff to read. We wanted to keep it all positive for him. But he couldn't just go online and read stuff, because of the negative stuff people write, but we had people writing positive stuff on our Facebook page which we'd pass to him. I still believe he was probably sick and knew he was sick and didn't get help because he just wanted to live his life as long as he could. And I think a lot of it was he was afraid to go and get checked and find out if it was cancer."
He added: "But then I found out this weekend that they weren't going to do chemo anymore because it wasn't working. I think he knew probably Saturday night that his time was coming. He was really afraid of chemo, he thought chemo was going to kill him. At first, it was looking good, all his numbers were going up but then all of a sudden he just took a real bad turn for the worst. He was told it could be weeks or months, and that the average was about five months."