Cremation jewelry (23)

I've been working on an essay (in fragments) about death—partly in relation to past Search & Rescue calls—and trying to balance some of the heavier entries with not-so-heavy anecdotes and information. In researching death rituals and practices from around the world, I learned that South Korea has adopted the relatively new (within the past couple of decades) "tradition" of turning cremation ashes into beads, to be put on display in one's home. 

South Korea has limited land area and a large population—and it is rapidly running out of cemetery space. In 2000, South Korea passed a law requiring families henceforth to remove the bodies of their dead from their graves after sixty years have passed. This law quickly led to an adjustment in how people lay deceased family members to rest, including a marked increase in the incidence of cremation: from 20% to 83% in a single generation, according to The Living Urn.

Although most people still store the ashes of loved ones in columbaria, many today transform them into beads. The ashes are ground into a fine powder, then refashioned; the process takes about two hours. The beads are then placed in clear vases, or set out on dishes. The dead live on.

As I've investigated this trend, I've found more and more sites, right here in the US, that advertise "cremation jewelry." Often these are lockets in which a bit of ash or a snip of hair can be stored, to be worn. Or ashes are incorporated into glass or opal or some other design element. 

Personally, I find all this rather creepy, but then, I don't wear jewelry. My preference, once I'm faced with an urn full of ashes—which, if I'm not lucky and die first, will be my husband David's (my mother sensibly did something in private with my father's ashes, and she entrusted her own to the Trident Society for burial at sea)—will be to scatter small handfuls of them in favorite or otherwise special places. A box will be just fine as a container, until such time comes that the ashes have all been dispersed to the winds.

Then again... I do wear earrings from time to time.