It’s your funeral …

Where the heart is
When two teenage brothers were killed in an auto accident during the ski season, Soffe helped their family commemorate the boys’ love of the outdoors by holding the funeral service at a local ski resort.

“The sounds of rushing water and the wilderness, that was their church, their religion,” Soffe said.

For those more at home on the range than on the slopes, a Texas company will build a coffin befitting the frontier lifestyle. Cowboy’s Last Ride Co. offers several models, including the “Mustang,” featuring tooled leather corners and stirrup handles, to the “Santa Fe,” which comes inlaid with turquoise stones.

Under the sea, close to the heart
Giving new meaning to the term “swimming with the fishes,” a Florida company that began making artificial marine habitats in the early 1990s will mix cremated remains into a concrete “reef ball” that can provide a home for sea creatures. Eternal Reefs offers several memorial options, from space in a community reef ($995) to its $4,995 “Atlantis” model that weighs in at nearly 4,000 pounds.

“Rather than passing an urn down to future generations, or taking space in a cemetery, this memorial is a true living legacy,” Eternal Reefs founders Don Brawley and George Frankel write on their Web site.

For those who wish to carry memories of a loved one close to the heart, Chicago-based LifeGem turns cremated remains into cultured diamonds that survivors can use in rings, necklaces, pendants and earrings. The gems, created by subjecting carbon extracted from ashes to intense heat and pressure, are available in a variety of sizes and colors, from a quarter-carat yellow diamond running $2,700 to a full-carat blue stone going for nearly $20,000.

lifegem.com Using a small amount of cremated remains, Chicago-based LifeGem can create yellow, blue and red cultured diamonds.

It was a “fear of being forgotten” that inspired LifeGem co-founder and president Rusty VandenBiesen to explore how gemstone technology could be applied to a memorial product. Four years and about 1,000 stones later, the company is refining its technique and exploring new, as-yet-undisclosed applications, according to Rusty’s brother and LifeGem vice president of operations Dean VandenBiesen.

“This is so unique and so personal,” he said. “It’s not just a personal memento. It becomes a conversation piece.”

Getting on board
Memorial spaceflights may seem a bit out of this world, but they aren’t the sole domain of astronomers, astronauts and sci-fi fans. The remains of children, writers and musicians have been placed aboard memorial flights, said Space Services spokesperson Susan Schonfeld.

“It’s everyday people from all over the world, and all walks of life. They can’t get to space in life, but they can get there in death.”

www.SpaceSeervicesInc.com A Space Services canister holding the individually-sealed remains from 125 people will be launched into orbit this summer.

Space Services offers several packages, from a $995 dime-sized capsule holding a gram of ashes to a 7-gram, lipstick-sized capsule that can be placed aboard a rocket for $5,300.

For this summer’s flight, a canister containing dozens of capsules will be loaded inside a Falcon rocket along with a Pentagon satellite and launched into orbit from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base. Depending on its trajectory, the payload could circle Earth for up to several hundred years before burning up in the atmosphere.

For those seeking a longer journey, Space Services will send a gram of ashes to the moon or into deep space for $12,500.

So what does the future hold for personalized memorials?

For Michael Lucas, it might include a journey to the final frontier to join his father.

“Figure I might as well join everybody else up there having fun.”

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