I ran a search and found that no one had devoted a thread to the beauty that is LifeGems. In case you haven’t heard of these, the fine and caring folks at LifeGem capture the carbon that is produced when you cremate a loved one, purify it, and create a diamond that you can wear to all social functions! They will do this starting at the low, low price of $2,499 for .20 of a carat, going up in price and size to the magnificent .90 of a carat for $13,999.
For the record, you can burn me, bury me, feed me to the dogs, set me on fire and shove me out to sea, or grind me up for GirlSpam sandwiches. But no matter what, do not make a freaking LifeGem out of me. Please.
Um, I would have no objection to be a rock, though I am not entirely certain I would want to make mrAru a rock…though I have seen online an advert for a glassblower who will admix some cremains into molten glass and make something with the resulting mix :dubious:
My main thought is what happens to your lifegem if the person who had you made into a rock dies…do you get auctioned off? Will there be a fad for collecting lifegems[like those braided hair mourning momento mori from the 1800s]? :dubious:
I think it’d cool to be made into a diamond or something else that is guaranteed to last until the sun subsumes the earth although I wouldn’t ask for it to be done nor would I have it done to any friend or family.
When I saw that site the first thing I thought of was this Ursula K. LeGuin story about a planet where there was a handful of immortal people. The tourists who go to visit the island are all fascinated by these diamond-like things that are all over the island. At the end you learn that these things are really
immortal people whose bodies broke down and became diamonds naturally, meaning they had been alive for millions of years. And the diamonds were alive, because they were technically still immortal people. So there were all these immortal people who wound up being some space tourist’s knick knack.
When I die, I want my body to be bombarded with neutrons, causing my atoms to become unstable and decay into smaller atoms, until I eventually become hydrogen.
One of my aunts thinks this would be a great idea for my grandpa. We’ve all moved away from where he’s interred, so why not make him into a few gems and never worry about finding time to visit?
I think we should just let me mix him into a ceramic glaze and decorate his own urn. Long lasting, attractive, and a hell of a lot cheaper than that gem thingy.
It’s frightening to think I may be the closest to normal my family has to offer.
I’m a glass blower and I can confirm. Customers have requested that we make sealed vessels with ashes inside them, which we have done. They’ve also asked us to put the ash in the glass itself and make something out of that, which we’ve refused to do (because we don’t like tampering with the chemical properties of the glass; and because, you understand, everything we made that day would have grandma in it).
I have heard word-of-mouth rumors of a company that mixes pretty sparkly stuff into the glass along with the ashes, and then claims to their customers that the cremains are what makes the glass pretty and sparkly. Defrauding the recently bereaved is so un-classy, no?
By far the creepiest request we ever got was the guy who commissioned us to make two tiny bottles, with which he planned to capture the tears of his terminally ill wife.
Perfect! I knew this whole idea felt wrong and creepy but I couldn’t quite articulate why I felt that way. Eve has captured it better than I ever could.
I have no problem with this, in fact I think it would be an interesting heirloom to have a necklace or something that the family keeps adding relatives to as they kick off. But, they they should really call it “Death Gems”…
And I gotta ask, what’s this “Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.” thing?
