BY HAILEY MERKT
Are you a tree-hugger at heart? Is music your one true love? Are diamonds actually your best friend?
Immortalize yourself as the things you loved most in life.
If cremation is in your will, you may want to add a creative request to your memorial service.
According to www.urnabios.com, “Bios Urn is a funerary urn made from biodegradable materials that will turn you into a tree after death.”
Your nutrient-rich ashes help fertilize the seed to grow into your tree of choice. Imagine being reborn as a weeping willow, cherry blossom or white birch tree.
This eco-friendly burial costs about $200 for the structurally engineered urn, ready to plant seed and organic mixture.
Let your loved ones plant you in your desired location and watch you grow.
Maybe your heart belongs to the sea, you’ve always felt like a fish out of water or you have always been mesmerized by the ocean’s many mysteries.
Eternal Reefs mixes your ashes with concrete to create an artificial reef structure and places it on the ocean floor for creatures of all kinds to inhabit.
This service costs anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000.
Aside from becoming a part of the aquatic ecosystem, the company’s website says the cremation ashes actually help restore damaged reefs and create a nurturing marine environment for fish and other forms of sea life.
Maybe forced reincarnation or eternity under the sea doesn’t sound so splendid to you. Not a problem, there are dozens of alternatives waiting to be explored.
With Angels Flight you can literally go out with a bang by having your ashes infused into a spellbinding fireworks display.
Holy Smoke appeals to the hard-core hunters of the world. You can have your ashes poured into hollow-point bullets or shotgun shells.
“Let us help you take your loved one on one more hunt or one more round of clays,” says the company’s website, www.myholysmoke.com.
Maybe music is what speaks to you and vintage runs through your veins.
And Vinyl, an online website, can press your ashes into a vinyl record with your favourite song, album or random sound bit, starting at $3,000.
“Now that’s a rocking way to go,” said American blogger Jill Harness.
However, a true rock and roller might go for the tattoo option.
You can request to have your ashes mixed into tattoo ink so loved ones can literally have you as a part of them forever.
Maybe you’re known for your sparkling personality and appreciate the finer things in life.
Diamonds are forever and now you can be too, with “LifeGem.”
Be one in a million and get made into a sparkling diamond for a loved one to wear.
In 2007, LifeGem sold a brilliant blue diamond made from strands of Beethoven’s hair for over $200,000 on eBay.
Prices run from $2,500 to nearly $20,000 depending on the carat size.
Ces Robles, a first-year global business management student at Conestoga College, said he would “love to be turned into a diamond.”
“I don’t think it’s creepy, it’s just a different way to face death … a desirable (way) to continue on.”
Don’t love these cremation creations? Well, how about being turned into a frisbee, 240 pencils, a stained-glass art design, a painting of your choice, an hourglass or have your urn sewn into the body of a plushy stuffy? Maybe that last one was a little morbid, but to each their own.
J.C. Aldana, a second-year electrical engineering technology student, thinks the concepts are great.
“Symbolically continuing life through something meaningful is a neat idea. You can continue to express yourself in the afterlife.”
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A tree, I love trees. A Pine Tree then when its matured it can be cut & used for fire wood if needed, Love to watch the fire burn & feel the warmth. You got me thinking!