This Artist Will Craft Your Loved One’s Ashes Into Beads

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BEADS

They say your loved ones never leave you, but if you want to carry their memory with you always, Merry Coor will craft their ashes into a stunning memorial bead.

“The bead is the first adornment that people ever wore. I think people are drawn to the bead because of that,” Coor told The Huffington Post.

Coor made her first memorial bead in 2014. A couple had asked her to incorporate the ashes of a friend into the glass beads she’s been making for 15 years.

“It was a pretty huge honor and privilege and intimate thing to do with these people’s ashes,” she said, later describing a tearful embrace with the couple. “I realized that this was something I could do for people. I could make a difference.”

Now, clients send her the ashes of their pets and loved ones through her Etsy store, which is a sideline to her Talisman Beads store in Eureka, California.

As part of her process, she invites clients to send along photos, letters and music associated with their lost loved ones. Although she hears tragic stories at times, Coor says she makes sure she’s in a good mood before getting to work and simply remembers how loved each person or pet was.

“I think you put the energy in there, how you’re feeling. You’re just going to put good intentions in it,” she said.

Coor crafts all her beads herself. First she makes round beads by applying heat from a torch to rods of silvered glass, then she applies the ash in a spiral pattern. A thin coating of clear glass seals the design.

Making one bead takes “15 years and 45 minutes,” Coor joked.

According to her Etsy shop, the beads start at $108.

Since her shop started getting attention online, she says she’s received 100 orders, about as many as she’d had in the past year.

“I’m getting orders from Uzbekistan. From all over the world. It’s overwhelming,” she said, adding that employees are helping her with paperwork and finishing the completed beads.

Her customers seem to value the ability to carry their loved ones close to their hearts.

Karen Hall-Thompson, an Etsy customer, cared for her brother for two years before he passed away from ALS.

“I wanted to have my brother with me through the rest of my life, just as I had the privilege of seeing him through the end of his,” she told HuffPost. “This process is very personal and special, not a cold and inhuman production line.”

Customer Danielle Marsalis had a bead made from the remains of her beloved dog Chloe. She said she appreciates that the bead, which she says is “very flattering,” doesn’t look like it’s made of ashes.

“Every time I open jewelry box it brings both a smile to my face and a tear to my eye,” she said.

Ora North, who also lost a dog, had beads made for her and her husband. A jewelry designer friend then put them on necklaces (as seen below).

“We didn’t get enough time with him, so the beads have allowed us to keep him close a little bit longer,” she said.


Photo courtesy Ora North

“I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to lose a brother or a sister or a spouse or a child, but I know that what I’m doing really helps people,” Coor told Humboldt Made. “I get beautiful letters back from people that are overwhelmed with the beads that I make for them.”

So, what’s her ultimate wish?

“I hope that the beads give you comfort, and help with your grief,” Coor wrote on her Etsy page.
Complete Article HERE!

Urban Death Project wants to compost your loved ones

Urban Death Project wants to compost your loved ones
SEATTLE — Turning a death bed into a garden bed is the idea behind the Urban Death Project, a non-profit group looking to provide a human composting facility.

The facility would be a repository intended for city dwellers to turn their departed into compost suitable for use in a garden or orchard.

“I love the idea of growing a tree out of someone I love that I’ve lost,” said Urban Death Project founder Katrina Spade.

She came up with the concept in 2011 and was awarded a $80,000 grant in 2014 from Echoing Green, a New York based environmentally conscience philanthropy.

“Cemeteries don’t hold any meaning anymore,” said Spade.

She see the tons of metal, wood and cement that are buried each year — as well as the hundreds of gallons of embalming fluid — as wasteful and unnecessary. She doesn’t oppose an person’s right to choose a traditional burial, but she wants to provide a more environmentally friendly option.

“As long as it’s a safe and sanitary and effective way of bringing a body into another state, I think there should be many options,” said Spade.

She’s proposing to build a three story building where family and friends would bring in their deceased loved ones wearing only a biodegradable shroud.

“You’d lay your loved one into woodchips and sawdust — that would be the moment you say goodbye,” Spade said. “Then a month and a half later, take some soil away and have another ceremony of your own, maybe grow a tree with your loved one’s soil.”

She says with proper care, it takes about six weeks for a body to full decompose, bones and all, into a course granular soil.

“The bodies are not touching each other in any way at the beginning, but once they become composite material, there will be mixing and finishing and that’s when that material is no longer one person,” Spade said. “You’ll be getting your grandmother, but you’ll also be getting your grandmother’s neighbor.”

Spade knows her project faces many legal and zoning hurdles. Washington’s current state law requires the bodies of humans to be buried, cremated or donated to science. If bodies are transferred out of state, then the laws of the next state go into effect. Many states are legalizing water cremations, a process known as alkaline hydrolysis.

Spade thinks it’s time to flesh out new forms of burial, especially since many urban centers no longer allow new cemeteries to be built.

Too many African Americans plan too little for death, experts say

By Hamil R. Harris


Lynne T. McGuire, president of McGuire Funeral Service Inc in D.C., said keeping up with important documents is critical to prepare for death.

Brandi Alexander was relieved when she got the news that her father’s cancer was in remission in 2003. Neither she nor her five siblings subsequently took the time  to talk with their father about his final wishes in the event he became ill or died.

But in November 2010, Alexander flew home from Denver to New Orleans for Thanksgiving and learned that her father’s cancer had returned. Less than two months later, Ferdinand Alexander was dead.

“”When my father came out of remission, he declined very quickly and none of us knew what he wanted,” Alexander said. “I had never had a conversation with him. I had all of this knowledge about end of life things but I had never talked to my own father who had a terminal disease. He was remarried and his new wife was making all of the decisions.”

Alexander’s comments came at the conclusion of a forum entitled “The Journey Home: An African American Conversation,” in which senior citizen advocates, morticians, pastors, financial planners and even an emergency room physician came together at SunTrust Bank to talk about death, dying and end-of life choices.

“My father had six kids and we didn’t agree with his wife, who had the power of attorney. And instead of honoring his life we were battling about his death,” said Alexander, regional campaign & outreach manager for Compassion & Choices, an end-of-life advocacy group that used to be known as the Hemlock Society.

While talking about death and dying is almost taboo in the African American community, Daniel Wilson, national director of Compassion & Choices said, “We have to look at the whole spectrum of what end-of-life looks like, from the point of diagnosis to what you need to look for when you are choosing a physician to should I go to hospice.”

John M. Thompson, director of the D.C. Office on Aging, said,In the District of Columbia we have 104,000 seniors and coming to an event like this is so important not only for the seniors but for their caregivers and the young to understand how to properly plan for the future.”

“Who’s going to be responsible for executing that will, if mom and dad dies?” Thompson said. “This is a chance to have a peaceful ending for mom and dad as they move on with life and live in harmony together.

Dr. Melissa Clarke, a local emergency physician, said, “I have been in too many situations where people have come in and based upon their age should have an advance health-care directive and it should be clear what should be done for them, but it’s not.”

Lynne T. McGuire, president of McGuire Funeral Service Inc. in the District, said that she wishes that she could have the opportunity to talk with families before  someone dies. “It is bigger than just funeral planning. The whole end of life spectrum: How do I want to be cared for ? Folks are starting to talk about it, but we really do need documentation.”

For example, McGuire said the funeral home buried a woman who was 102 and learned too late that her husband who died 60 years ago, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery and there was space for her. “There was a grave reserved for her but it is too late.”

Tiffany Tippins, CEO of Impactful Wealth Solutions, said, “I think the biggest thing I see in planning for death is the lack of planning: Making decisions, letting someone know when you can’t speak for yourself and when you can act for yourself,  what do you want to happen.”

The Rev. Thomas L. Bowen, assistant pastor of the Shiloh Baptist Church in the District, said in the same way couples are offered premarital counseling, pastors need to offer counseling before people leave this earth. “A lot of times we as pastors are the first responders. When death comes, people say, ‘Lord, what am I going to do,’ then they call the preacher and say, ‘what am I going to do.’”

Complete Article HERE!

Cemetery Art – 12/08/14

The task of interpreting the symbols on a headstone or memorial is a daunting one. Although most of the symbols that you will see DO have a textbook meaning, it is quite possible that the headstone or memorial you are looking at was put there simply because someone liked the look of it. Therefore, it will have no meaning beyond the taste of the deceased or those left behind to morn. The point is that many people choose a memorial motif not for its textbook meaning, but simply because they like the ornamentation or design, because it feels “right” or appropriate.

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The Hanging Coffin

First appearing during the Spring and Autumn Period (722-481BC), hanging coffin is a unique funeral and sacrifice custom of the minority groups in southern China. People put the bodies of their ancestors into wooden coffins that were later placed in caves of precipitous cliffsides.

Most coffins were made with one whole piece of wood into various shapes. It was said that the hanging coffins could prevent bodies from being taken by beasts and also bless the soul eternally.

  Famous Hanging Coffin Sites :

While hanging coffins can be found in many places in China, the strange thing is all of them only existed for a certain period in history. Those in Wuyi Mountain are the first appear in China, as early as in the Zhou Dynasty (1027-777BC) while those in Gongxian County of Southwest china’s Sichuan province are the most recent, which also marked the end of the hanging coffin custom.

Hanging Coffins of Bo People in Gongxian, Sichuan Provinve
Hanging Coffins of Guyue People in Dragon Tiger Mountain
Hanging Coffins of Guyue People in Wuyi Mountain

The mystery of hanging coffins

Why did the ancient people bury the dead in hanging coffins?

According to historical records, the Bo people believed “Coffins set high are considered auspicious. The higher they are the more propitious for the dead”. Also, after experiencing years of wars and natural disasters, the Bo people dreamed of going somewhere peaceful and quiet after their death. That is why they chose to rest their bodies on the precipices with the mountains and rivers around, all peaceful, beautiful and quiet. The Guyue people, on the other hand, held a high esteem for high mountains, and believed the higher the hanging coffin was placed; the better they could be protected.

How did the ancient people do it?

So how did the ancient people, including the Bo people and Guyue people, do it? This question once caused heated discussion among experts . Some believe the coffins were lowered down with ropes from the top of the mountain. Some ought the coffins were put in place with wooden stakes inserted into the cliff surface as artificial climbing aids. Others feel that earth ramps were the answer.

Cui Chen, a curator of the Yibin Museum, who examined the three different ways the coffins of the Bo people could have been put in place, has this to say:

“Earth ramps might have been used but experts discount this solution due to the amount of labor required, which would have been difficult in an underpopulated area. A timber scaffold supported on stakes in the cliff might have offered a plausible explanation but years of investigation have failed to find even a single stake hole. On balance the third option of lowering the coffins on ropes from above had always seemed feasible and now cultural specialists have found the telltale marks of the ropes which were used all these years ago. And so this part of the mystery of the hanging coffins has now been resolved.”
During the later years of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the imperial army cruelly oppressed the ethnic minority peoples of Southwestern China Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. In particular, the Duzhangman and Bo Peoples fell victims of massacre. To escape their oppression, the Bo migrated to new locations. They hid their real names and assimilated with other ethnic groups. Like their culture they have disappeared but their descendents are still here for they are a part of us.
How the Guyue people hung the coffins onto the Fairy-water Rocks of Longhushan (Dragon TigerMountain) remains a mystery, since the hanging coffins are so dangerously located. Over the years, it has taken on a mystic air. Some people say the coffins were hung up with the aid from the immortals in the heaven, while others say there are invaluable treasures within the caves. Longhushan Administration Bureau once offered a 300,000 yuan ($US 36298) reward for solving the mystery, but so far no one has won the reward.

 

Dia de los Muertos (Day Of The Dead)

More than 500 years ago, when the Spanish Conquistadors landed in what is now Mexico, they encountered natives practicing a ritual that seemed to mock death.

It was a ritual the indigenous people had been practicing at least 3,000 years. A ritual the Spaniards would try unsuccessfully to eradicate.

A ritual known today as Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.

The ritual is celebrated in Mexico and certain parts of the United States. Although the ritual has since been merged with Catholic theology, it still maintains the basic principles of the Aztec ritual, such as the use of skulls.

Today, people don wooden skull masks called calacas and dance in honor of their deceased relatives. The wooden skulls are also placed on altars that are dedicated to the dead. Sugar skulls, made with the names of the dead person on the forehead, are eaten by a relative or friend, according to Mary J. Adrade, who has written three books on the ritual.

The Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations kept skulls as trophies and displayed them during the ritual. The skulls were used to symbolize death and rebirth.

The skulls were used to honor the dead, whom the Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations believed came back to visit during the monthlong ritual.

Unlike the Spaniards, who viewed death as the end of life, the natives viewed it as the continuation of life. Instead of fearing death, they embraced it. To them, life was a dream and only in death did they become truly awake.

“The pre-Hispanic people honored duality as being dynamic,” said Christina Gonzalez, senior lecturer on Hispanic issues at Arizona State University. “They didn’t separate death from pain, wealth from poverty like they did in Western cultures.”

However, the Spaniards considered the ritual to be sacrilegious. They perceived the indigenous people to be barbaric and pagan.

In their attempts to convert them to Catholicism, the Spaniards tried to kill the ritual.

But like the old Aztec spirits, the ritual refused to die.

To make the ritual more Christian, the Spaniards moved it so it coincided with All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day (Nov. 1 and 2), which is when it is celebrated today.

Previously it fell on the ninth month of the Aztec Solar Calendar, approximately the beginning of August, and was celebrated for the entire month. Festivities were presided over by the goddess Mictecacihuatl. The goddess, known as “Lady of the Dead,” was believed to have died at birth, Andrade said.

Today, Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico and in certain parts of the United States and Central America.

“It’s celebrated different depending on where you go,” Gonzalez said.

In rural Mexico, people visit the cemetery where their loved ones are buried. They decorate gravesites with marigold flowers and candles. They bring toys for dead children and bottles of tequila to adults. They sit on picnic blankets next to gravesites and eat the favorite food of their loved ones.

In Guadalupe, the ritual is celebrated much like it is in rural Mexico.

“Here the people spend the day in the cemetery,” said Esther Cota, the parish secretary at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. “The graves are decorated real pretty by the people.”

Complete Article HERE!

CA Governor Signs Respect After Death Act

(Sacramento) Today, California’s Respect After Death Act (AB 1577) was signed by Governor Brown, having passed in both the Assembly and Senate earlier this year. The long-awaited bill will provide needed guidance to help ensure that transgender people have their gender identity reflected on their death certificates. It was authored by Speaker of the Assembly Toni Atkins and co-sponsored by Equality California and Transgender Law Center.

respect after death

“We are grateful to the Governor, California’s Legislature, and the leadership of Assembly Speaker Atkins for enacting this common-sense bill that will help protect the dignity of our loved ones upon their passing,” said Masen Davis, Executive Director of Transgender Law Center. “This brings us a significant step closer to making sure that all transgender people are able to live—and die—authentically in accordance with who they really are.”

“Everyone deserves to have their identity respected in death, and this law cleans up a confusing process to ensure transgender Californians get the same respect that anyone else gets,” said Rick Zbur, executive director of EQCA. “We thank the Governor and Speaker Atkins for their leadership on this issue.”

AB 1577 requires the official responsible for completing a transgender person’s death certificate to do so in a manner that reflects the person’s gender identity if they are presented appropriate documentation, such as written instructions from the deceased person confirming their wishes, an updated birth certificate or driver’s license, or evidence of medical treatment for gender transition. In the absence of these documents, the gender reported by the person’s legal next of kin would be used.

Chris LeeDrafted at the beginning of this year, the bill drew inspiration from the passing of Christopher Lee, a San Francisco artist and transgender advocate who was misgendered after his death in 2012. The bill was passed by the Assembly Health Committee in March, and passed by the Senate in August. Transgender Law Center congratulates everyone who has helped advocate for this important step!

“I’m so happy,” said Lee’s close friend Chino Scott-Chung. “It brings us great solace to know that Christopher’s legacy will live on to protect the dignity of other transgender people, and that their friends and families will hopefully not have to endure what we did.”

Transgender Law Center works to change law, policy, and attitudes so that all people can live safely, authentically, and free from discrimination regardless of their gender identity or expression. www.transgenderlawcenter.org

Equality California (EQCA) is the largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender advocacy organization in California. For more than a decade, Equality California has strategically moved California from a state with extremely limited legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to a state with some of the most comprehensive human rights protections in the nation. Equality California has partnered with legislators to successfully sponsor more than 100 pieces of pro-equality legislation. EQCA continues to advance equality through legislative advocacy, electoral work, public education and community empowerment. www.eqca.org

Complete Article HERE!