"The Rose" Urn/Box

Here is the final, finished box for my mom's ashes. Needless to say, the transfer idea did not work out. It will reside in a columbarium at St. Paul's Cathedral in Peoria, IL. I suppose there might be those who think it's kind of silly to put work into something that will then be buried, but for me it was therapeutic. It gave me a chance to imagine what it would be like to create something for my mom one last time. I know she would have loved it, because she loved her children and was proud of their accomplishments.

I have a whimsical notion that some day in the distant future, an archeologist will find the box and have to work out the details of it: what it was made of and why. Perhaps I should laminate a photo of my mom along with the words to the song and place it in the box... Maybe her obituary, too. Make it a time capsule of sorts.

Next on the agenda: finishing the slide show for the memorial. One of my brothers and his wife have been working hard on getting some other presentations together, and arranging for a family dinner after the memorial.

Love.

Ashes

My next project is to make a polymer clay box to go around the cardboard box my mom's ashes came in. I have never made a large box, and I'm pretty sure I could not make it sturdy enough to hold the ashes without the sturdy cardboard as a structure.

My plan is to make it very simple, and transfer the lyrics to "The Rose" by Amanda McBroom, which my mom wanted to be sung at her funeral, onto the top:

Some say love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed
Some say love, it is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love, it is a hunger
An endless aching need
I say love, it is a flower
And you, its only seed

It's the heart, afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance
It's the dream, afraid of waking
That never takes the chance
It's the one who won't be taken
Who cannot seem to give
And the soul, afraid of dying
That never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snow
Lies the seed
That with the sun's love, in the spring
Becomes the rose

Transfers are another thing I am not proficient at, so I'm thinking I'll need to go to a copy shop and have a lazer print made... or, if I can find my t-shirt transfer paper in the mess downstairs, I'll use my ink-jet printer. If it works, I may transfer a photo of her as well.

The box will be going into a columbarium in St. Paul's Cathedral in Peoria, IL.