How Does it Feel to Keep an Urn for Ashes in the Home?
Keeping cremains in the home is a personal decision. The topic invites thoughtful consideration as to the every-day presence of a loved one who has passed. How might that feel?
Keeping Ashes in the Home: Comfort, Conflict or Compromise?
For some, keeping a loved-one’s cremated remains in the home can bring great comfort to the survivors. For others, seeing a cremation urn every day can cause undue stress and prolonged...
Choosing a Burial Cremation Urn
Burial urns, or funeral urns, are designed to hold ashes in a manner that is respectful and aesthetically pleasing. The urn is often a focal point, such as during traditional...
Burying Ashes With a Memorial Tree or in a Remembrance Garden
If you’ve lost a loved one whose passion was gardening, or a pet who loved digging in the garden, consider giving their cremation ashes a natural burial. The process isn’t...
Cremation in Relation to Religious and Spiritual Traditions, Part I
The Cremation Association of North America predicts that by 2025, 65.2 percent of deaths will result in cremation. Choosing cremation or a traditional burial is often linked to religious beliefs and practices,...
Threshold Choirs
One day when I shared a personal story with Kathy, my friend at work, she confided that she is a threshold singer, part of a choir that sings at the...
Guardian of Cremation Keepsakes: Keeping ashes at home
Are you keeping ashes in the house? Perhaps it’s what your loved one wanted, or what you decided. What will happen to the cardboard box, or the cherished keepsake urn,...
Your Electronic Legacy: Whose Memorial is it?
For most Americans today, family life is archived digitally and shared publicly online. But few Americans have provided for the care and protection of volumes of personal digital data. When you...
How to Fill Cremation Jewelry
We are often asked how to fill a jewelry urn with a loved one’s ashes. The process is simple, but quite different than that of filling a large display cremation...
Capture a Moment in a Memory Box
Throughout our lives we create memories. Starting from birth all the way to death – moments are celebrated, grieved, and shared – moments become memories and inform our future. Poignant and...
Faux Pas, Spirits and Keeping Cremated Ashes in the Home
I’ve run into people who wonder if it’s bad luck to keep ashes at home. Maybe that depends on whether you believe in spirits, and if they're considered good or bad...
The Gift of Saying Goodbye
Grief is defined as a natural and normal reaction to loss. Yet the physiological and emotional wounds that grief can cause are the least understood of emotional experiences. Unresolved grief can...