Or write about it, if you do.  I can’t hold it in any longer, though.  My apologies in advance.

As I mentioned in my earlier post of “Afterglow”,  there’s stuff we try not to think about.  The biggie in that category is the end of our mortal days.  Yet, being a practical person, my mind drifts there once in awhile in a silent attempt to calculate how much time I have left, and out of that, how much I can afford to piss away on the internet.  

Recently, one of my cousins and I got on this mortality tangent, and she brings up this Life Gem thing.  If you haven’t heard about this, lemme tell ya.  There’s a company that will take a portion of your cremated remains, and using a process similar to the creation of a synthetic diamond, make a precious gem out of you.

Ashes to ashes…dust to…diamonds?!  Say WHAT. 

Seriously, this is promoted as a way to pass yourself down as a heirloom.  And become a precious stone as well as a precious memory to your loved ones.  A pendant, earrings, or perhaps a nice tennis bracelet?  

GAH! Oh, but it gets better. Or worse. 

This concept drove me crazy, because 1) The idea of being cremated freaks me out.   2) Now I’m curious what I’d look like as a mood ring.

Because of the various chemical compositions in a human body, one’s Life Gem color cannot be predicted. (Though most turn out yellow or orange.)  I was thinking, jeeze, what if I had this done to my remains – assuming I could handle what it took to get there – and then my gem turns out to be some yucky color?  What if I didn’t go with somebody’s outfit? I’d get stuffed into a box, never to be worn. 

One of my other cousins, upon hearing my triade, piped up and said,  “Relax. You’ll go with black…everything goes with black.”   This cheered me up, as I enjoy wearing black clothing, and imagined myself therefore equally cool as a hunk of synthetic ash, as I was in life.  For whatever that’s worth. 

Distracting thought:  Would these Life Gems end up on ebay?  Would people try to pawn them?  It’s one thing to be dead.  But I tell ya, if I ended up in a pawn shop beyond the grave, it would just be the frosting on the cake.

Anyhow, I found this Life Gem concept both repelling and interesting, so I studied it, and ran into all kinds of information I wasn’t looking for in the course of my research.

For example, there’s companies that make “memorial jewlery” that simply use a tiny amount of your natural, cremated ash to fill a glass pendant. You can be a life-gem of sorts, without the expensive synthetic process.  

Here’s the thing with memorial jewlery. Much of it comes in a do-it-yourself kit.  It includes a tiny little funnel so your loved one can fill the little pendant.  I wasn’t ready for this idea.

After I recovered from my faint, I pictured somebody scooping out a portion of my powdered ash with a teaspoon, and trying to pour it in this tiny funnel and fill the little pendant.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t fill a salt shaker or a sugar bowl without getting spillage.  So I imagine some of it making it into the pendant, and then some of it spilling on the coffee table, on the carpet….and then my mortal essence would be sucked up into a vacumn cleaner, or dusted away with a handi-wipe and lemon-fresh Pledge. 

Chilling, ain’t it?  Oh, there’s more.

I also discovered a Scandanavian company that has a process to make human remains completely biodegradable – quickly. No bones about it, those who dislike cremation can now avoid a slow rot.  This company can turn you into a nice blend of plant food, so you can nourish the earth as nature intended.  Sans worms. 

Who knows what they’ll think of next.

All that said - I’ll never be made into a gem stone or poured into a glass pendant.  I doubt I’ll opt to become plant food. I would much rather have a blanket of sod and a leafy tree for company. A stone marker to prove I was here, until the passage of time etches away the name. 

What will remain, is the part of me I gave away to others during my lifetime.  Perhaps through them, a part of me will make it though to someone I’ve never met.  Our afterglow – the influence our lives – fades after our mortal days are over.  But just as the sunset never looks the same twice, it holds a bit of color from each one before it. 

 

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