What a way to go
This is certainly different:
Now, the ashes of a loved one can be made into a beautiful diamond, thanks to a Swiss company called Algordanza…Using a combination of machines and complex scientific process, the staff at Algordanza separate the carbon from the deceased’s ashes, then convert the carbon into graphite, and use specific temperatures and pressure to create a diamond “seed.”
The color of the diamond varies depending on how much boron is present in the deceased’s ashes. The more boron, the bluer the diamond.
The finished product:
It gives new meaning to the song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.”
But what it really reminds me of is one of my favorite verses from Shakespeare (it’s actually part of Ariel’s song in “The Tempest”), the mysteriously evocative “Full Fathom Five“:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them ”” Ding-dong, bell.
I like things musical to be musical. I enjoyed the poem, and so went looking for music. It is tasteful enough, though no guarantee it will be to your tastes. A gift for a treat. I do try (more than nerves, if rarely). 🙂
Oh, but about the diamonds… I’m not sure, actually I am positive, as a Catholic, a practicing Catholic, this would be quite frowned up. There is an allowance for cremation, with some caveats. But with the Kennedy clan, for example, well… Just a body and soul alignment thing.
Dumb thy hear Sea’song
Of five fathom’s j’Bell
Or sar thee
Orwell
Inside Mei Oo’long
I find it degrading.
Diamonds are a ghoul’s best friend?
hmm, if money wasn’t an issue I rather like the idea.
But, I’d rather leave the money spent on this as cash to my family – just scatter my ashes to the wind.
I think the Viking Funeral I read about recently would a better ending to the end when a guys request for his ashes to be placed in a wooden boat and sent out to sea was carried out.
There are lots of companies that do this and I’m pretty sure they’ve been doing it for years. Just Google “cremation diamonds”.
My only question is about the blue color. I did a fair amount of reading on diamonds and other gemstones after I got interested in gemstones from watching Jewelry Television in my spare time. Natural blue diamonds are very rare. Most lab-created diamonds are yellow to one degree or another. Or even brown, for the lower quality ones. So did they have some breakthrough specifically in making blue diamonds? Natural blues are formed from the presence of boron (and the absence of nitrogen, which causes yellow coloring in diamonds). The reason lab-created diamonds tend to be yellow is because it’s very difficult to make diamonds without nitrogen contamination. Also, I wonder how boron levels could really vary from individual to individual. And I also wonder how much boron there is in the human body in the first place. And I also wonder how the boron stays with the carbon when they’re running a carbon extraction process? And what about the nitrogen? It kind of sounds like marketing hype to me.
Also, a seed is not a complete diamond, it’s a microscopic diamond used to grow the full-size diamond. So is the entire diamond made from your loved one, or just the seed? It sounds like the reporter didn’t know much about what they were talking about. If so, what a surprise.
The modern head hunter wears a diamond necklace.
I’m guessing Pauulie “The Beard” Krugman, if he does this, will be the bluest diamond ever–he’s mostly bore-on. (Yes, I should be ashamed of myself, but I Just Couldn’t Stop Myself.)
I prefer cremation followed by scattering the ashes. The cost of $4,500 + cremation is less than what many caskets cost. Given the choice between a casket and a diamond, I would choose a diamond.
Could you also use the remains of an animal, say a cow for this? Or how about making diamonds from a couple of thousand NYC rats?
I would never be interested for myself, though. I’m not that interested in gems and jewelry and I wouldn’t want to be stolen in a robbery.
I dunno, it just doesn’t seem right to accessorize with the remains of a loved one, no matter how pretty and sparkly you can make them.
The swiss have quite a knack for making money from people being cremated.
I’m kind of mixed on this, myself … I think my mother would consider this for Dad’s ashes, if the price wasn’t so out there.
Dad’s canister of ashes actually resides, day in and day out, in the back seat of Mom’s car. She says that she likes to have him there, when she goes out and about.
Yes, our family is weird. My younger brother and I think that Dad would have liked his ashes on a shelf in the garage – his man-cave, as it were. Once, when the topic did come up, he said that he would like to have them scattered in the desert (unspecified) and I know of a nice stretch of the Mojave where he would feel perfectly at home with the desert and everything.
But Mom likes him in the back seat. A jewel-charm might be a little more portable, I suppose.
Sgt. Mom:
Wow.
I did say our family is weird, didn’t I?
I’ve got a little bit of my brother up on a shelf in my living room. I never would have believed that before he died.
I’m skeptical that significant carbon remains in the ashes of cremation. I just read an excerpt of an article on the subject. it mentioned that some of the organic compounds are converted to oxides and carbonates during cremation. The most numerous elements are phosphorus, calcium, sulfur and potassium. Read the link. http://www.scattering-ashes.co.uk/general/cremation-ashes-chemicalcompostion/
Could you also use the remains of an animal, say a cow for this?
Sure. I saw this kind of service advertised in a veterinarian’s office in 2009, and since then I’ve been planning on doing it with my pets. I’ve moved around the country a lot, so there’s no special place to bury or scatter them…plus it might be the only way to get them buried with me wherever I end up as a lot of human cemeteries don’t/can’t take animals.
But I wouldn’t do it for my parents, who believe in the Resurrection of the body (although I suspect if my sister wants this it will happen no matter what anyone else wants. Families, man.)
“What does Reincarnation mean?”
A cowpoke asked his friend.
His pal replied, “It happens when
Yer life has reached its end.
They comb yer hair, and warsh yer neck,
And clean yer fingernails,
And lay you in a padded box
Away from life’s travails.”
“The box and you goes in a hole,
That’s been dug into the ground.
Reincarnation starts in when
Yore planted ‘neath a mound.
Them clods melt down, just like yer box,
And you who is inside.
And then yore just beginnin’ on
Yer transformation ride.”
“In a while, the grass’ll grow
Upon yer rendered mound.
Till some day on yer moldered grave
A lonely flower is found.
And say a hoss should wander by
And graze upon this flower
That once wuz you, but now’s become
Yer vegetative bower.”
“The posy that the hoss done ate
Up, with his other feed,
Makes bone, and fat, and muscle
Essential to the steed,
But some is left that he can’t use
And so it passes through,
And finally lays upon the ground
This thing, that once wuz you.”
“Then say, by chance, I wanders by
And sees this upon the ground,
And I ponders, and I wonders at,
This object that I found.
I thinks of reincarnation,
Of life and death, and such,
And come away concludin’: ‘Slim,
You ain’t changed, all that much.'”
© Wallace McRae, 1992
Daniel in Brookline: A winner, that one! 🙂