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Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
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Thumbies, keepsakes help remember loved ones |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Monday, 19 July 2004 |
By DEBRA PRESSEY
TUSCOLA – An urn of ashes on the mantle, a lock of hair, a family photo – these are the traditional kinds of keepsakes people hang onto when a loved one dies.
But when Greg Hankey went to a recent funeral directors convention and spotted a display of gold and silver jewelry made from thumbprints of the deceased, he knew he wanted to bring that product back to his own customers in Douglas County.
"I thought, that's really neat. It's different," added Hankey, owner of Waddington Funeral Home in Tuscola.
So-called "Thumbies" – gold and medal medallions made by a Fox River Grove company from the thumbprints sent in by funeral directors – are just one of many new options being offered to grieving people looking for unique ways to keep somebody close after death.
There are companies making cremation jewelry, with hollowed openings to hold a smidgeon of cremated ashes, companies making mementos out of funeral flowers, and even one company turning the cremated remains of people and pets into genuine diamonds.
The United States funeral industry, currently worth an estimated $10 billion-plus a year, says Thumbies and other items are just one more reflection of what today's consumers want both in life and in death – something unique and custom-made just for them.
"There's been a lot of talk about the baby boom generation and their impact on virtually everything they touch, and this is an extension of that," said Paul Dixon, executive director of the Illinois Funeral Directors Association. "This is an indication that families are seeking more individual, customized service."
David Gordon, founder of Meadow Hill Company Inc., said the Thumbies made by his company generally wind up on such items as necklaces, cufflinks and key chains. The company can even shrink a baby's entire footprint or handprint to put on its jewelry pieces, and will also add precious stones to the pieces upon customers' requests.
Gordon said he got into the Thumbies business after his mother had similar medallions made for him using his two (living) daughters' thumbprints. People are welcome to order such mementos of their living loved ones, he said, but most of his business comes from the 1,500 funeral homes currently offering Thumbies to their customers across the country.
People find them both an individual kind of memento and one that isn't morbid, Gordon said.
"When you wear our product, it doesn't scream out death," he added.
Another funeral keepsake company, Elk Grove Village-based LifeGem, is also finding a growing demand – and even has a waiting list – for its diamonds made out of cremated remains, said one of its founders, Dean VandenBisen.
VandenBisen said his company takes about a cup of the cremated remains, purifies them to separate carbon, and then uses the carbon to create a diamond. If that sounds morbid, consider the fact that natural diamonds are pretty much pure carbon, and LifeGem is just using a unique source of carbon for its man-made diamonds, he said.
As many as 20 diamonds can be made from just one cup of the cremated remains, and often families will have several diamonds made, VandenBisen said. The company will also store the remains for its customers who sometimes want to order more diamonds later. For example, one of LifeGem's first customers, a man whose daughter had died, recently ordered an additional diamond for his daughter's close friend who was getting married, VandenBisen said.
"This daughter would have been a bridesmaid," he added. "He surprised her best friend with a diamond. He had it set in a pendant, so basically Valerie could be there for the wedding even though she's gone."
VandenBisen acknowledges such mementos aren't for everyone, but he holds with the notion that having something physical to hang onto actually helps people let go of someone who died.
"There are people who react and say this is strange, this is weird," he added. "But the people who do choose this get a lot of comfort. They're grieving ... and it does provide closure."
Hankey, a paramedic who turned to the funeral business later in life, said people today want funerals that are more personal and customized to the individual, and he's all for that.
"I'm a firm advocate that everybody is different. I like each funeral to be different," he said.
Hankey has a showroom full of such things as custom panels and cornerpieces for caskets that people can choose to display the deceased person's interests in life, from fishing to sewing. If family members want, he removes the cornerpieces before the burial and later turns them into special memorial plaques they can keep.
David Walkinshaw, an Arlington, Mass.-based funeral director and a spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association, said there's definitely a growing array of keepsake merchandise that seems to go hand in hand with the trend toward personalizing funerals.
"Every year I go to the funeral directors convention and see new things," he said. "They run from wind chimes that can be personalized with peoples' names on them to stones to put in a garden with cremated remains in them," he added.
Walkinshaw said there are now even miniature urns made so that family members who can't agree on who gets to keep the cremated remains can share them.
One of the tough jobs for funeral directors is to sort through the mountain of products and select those that families in their own markets might want, then determine how and when – and if – it's appropriate to introduce them to each family,Walkinshaw said.
"For a particular family, it might be absolutely the right thing and for another family it might be absolutely not the right thing," he added.
Drew Edwards, manager of three Danville-area funeral homes under common ownership – Sunset, Houghton-Leasure and Sunset South's Westville Chapel – said he's seeing a growing interest in small vials of wildflowers that can be given out to funeral guests to plant as a memorial to the person who died.
Those three funeral homes also offer cremation jewelry and briefly offered Thumbies, but they don't push any products, he said.
"There are all kinds of companies selling stuff like this. ... What we try to do is keep it pretty simple," Edwards said. "Our main concern is the families we serve, but if they ask for it, we'll try to call and help them get anything they like. But we don't actively sell all that stuff."
Jim Yost, an owner of Owens Funeral Home in Champaign, said his funeral home will offer families the option of a post-funeral visit from a company that will turn a picture of their choice into a memorial item. But he doesn't get all that many requests for unusual keepsakes, he said.
He might be a bit on the traditional side, Yost said, but to him many of these items sound nice at the time, yet they tend to complicate things for grieving families, many of whom are so immobilized by their losses they have a hard time just getting through the basic details of the funeral planning.
"I don't see it as our job to sell more merchandise to people," Yost said.
http://www.news-gazette.com/story.cfm?Number=16387 |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Taphophilia Facts
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New Hampshire is home to one Presidential gravesite, Franklin Pierce.
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Quote Repository
“I have seen a thousand graves opened, and always perceived that whatever was gone, the teeth and hair remained of those who had died with them. Is not this odd? They go the very first things in youth and yet last the longest in the dust.” Lord Byron
Grave Epigrams
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"The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place. " |
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Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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