I thought there were places in this article which were funny as hell. Now i'm worried that my outlook is fuct up.
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Ashes to diamonds
By Dea Hadar
NEW YORK- Bob Valentino, Sr. remembers the morning his late wife returned home. It was last July, about nine months after she succumbed to an aggressive cancer at age 51, and about six months after he sent more than 200 grams of her ashes to LifeGem. This Chicago-area company (slogan: "Love Lives On") promised to transform her remains into a pure, sparkling and everlasting diamond. His son from his first marriage had seen an ad on television for the memorial diamonds, and immediately called to tell him about it. The next day, Bob was on the phone to Rusty VandenBiesen, one of the two brothers who founded LifeGem about four years ago.
"I'd never heard of anything like it. But I didn't hesitate at all, even though it's quite expensive and I'm also not really the jewelry type. I knew that I wanted a part of her to be with me all the time," says Valentino, 67, who worked as a butcher in a supermarket before retiring more than a decade ago following a work accident.
You don't have to go into his house, located outside the sleepy town of Gardiner, New York, to feel his wife's lingering presence. On a sunless winter afternoon, his fishing boat, named My Patti, is parked in the front yard. His dog, Nicki, a birthday gift from his wife 12 years ago, accompanies the approaching visitors. "The Valentinos, Patti & Bob" reads the sign on the door, alongside some faded Christmas decorations. Valentino comes out.
He really doesn't look like the jewelry type, but it's impossible to miss the sparkle glinting off his gold ring, set with a .66 carat diamond. "It came out a lot bigger than I expected. It was supposed to be between .24 - .29 carat, but it was too pure. They told me that they didn't find any foreign substances at all in her ashes," he explains proudly.
Alongside a mounted deer's head and a rack full of hunting rifles on the dark-paneled living room walls is a photo gallery crowded with pictures of children and grandchildren, but mostly of Patti. Bob and Patti next to a fir tree, a suntanned Patti in Colorado during a cross-country trip, a final photo showing a smaller and tired-looking Patti in a brown coat that is too big for her. The pictures repeat themselves, in varying sizes and frames of different shapes. Logs that Valentino chopped himself are burning in the fireplace. On the mantel is large wooden box decorated with carvings of birds and the inscription: Patti Valentino. December 11, 1952-November 19, 2004. It contains the ashes that were not used in the manufacture of the diamond.
The wait for the diamond felt like an eternity, says Bob. "I called them all the time. I don't know how many times. I wanted to know how the process was progressing. I was anxious for it to come back to me," he recalls. "And then I opened the mailbox one morning and it was there. I was thrilled. It was almost as if Patti had come home. I immediately put the ring on my finger and then I got in my car and started driving from place to place to show it to everyone. People couldn't believe it."
Soon to be mainstream
The diamonds being manufactured at the LifeGem laboratory in Illinois are another byproduct of the cremation industry, which has been growing throughout the United States in recent years. In 2003, according to data from the Cremation Association of North America, 29 percent of deceased persons or their relatives requested cremation, compared to 21 percent in 1996. The association predicts that by 2025, more than 45 percent of Americans will choose to have their remains turned into ashes. In some states, particularly in the western U.S., this is already the case. Washington, Hawaii, Nevada and Oregon top the lis,t with over 60 percent choosing cremation. Not far behind are Arizona, Alaska, Montana, Colorado and California, where more and more dead bodies are going up in smoke.
These numbers provide a good reason for optimism to the VandenBiesen brothers, Rusty and Dean, from Chicago, who started LifeGem in 2002 together with another pair of brothers, Greg and Mike Herro. The elder brother, Rusty, a 37-year-old former pilot who had been preoccupied by the idea of death since childhood, was the one who came up with the idea. "Rusty understood at age 4 that we're all going to die someday, including himself, and this led him to think about what happens after you die," says Dean. "He didn't like the idea that burial and cremation were the only possibilities. He didn't want to be forgotten after he died, and to him, being in the ground meant being out of sight and out of mind. When he grew up, he decided that he had to do something better, and he started to research the subject."
In his research on various chemical elements, Rusty discovered that the carbon of which the human body is composed is the same as that from which diamonds are made. "He started to look for a way to capture the carbon from human remains and create a diamond from it. For him, the diamond was a way to feel better about death," Dean continues.
The VandenBiesen brothers studied the field, put together a business plan and began marketing their unique product to the general public. The price of the diamonds before they are set in a piece of jewelry ranges from $2,700 to $20,000, depending on the size and color (blue or yellow).
LifeGem employs about 20 people. Members of the staff say that in the past year the founding brothers doubled the number of sales compared to the previous year. The brothers say that so far they have created close to 2,000 diamonds for clients. "We'll continue to grow. I believe this is something that will become mainstream," says Dean VandenBiesen. He and his brother have already made arrangements to have their remains transformed into diamonds when the time comes. Their clients are mostly widows, aged 40-60, and a majority come from the West Coast.
Hundreds of millions of years separate a diamond produced in nature from the kind created in the lab, at high pressure and high heat, but LifeGem insists that the stones it manufactures, using the carbon from human remains, would also be classified as diamonds under the loupes of the most exacting jewelers. When asked how one can be sure that part of their deceased loved one is indeed contained within, Dean VandenBiesen describes a long and complicated process that includes an ID number, a password, the possibility of receiving updates on the process, a number etched on the diamond itself and a gemologist's certificate that identifies the components of the stone.
"There were people who thought we were crazy," admits Dean, "but in general the reactions have been very positive. People today understand that they have the power and the freedom to decide what will happen to them after their death. Just because someone in the burial industry wants everyone to be buried, that doesn't mean that this is the right option for everyone. The casket, the plot, the ceremony - it's all very expensive. Cremation is much cheaper and more logical. So a lot more people are opting for it. The option of the diamond attracts people who have lost someone very close to them whom they loved very much. People need contact, and the diamond is something tangible that contains something of the deceased loved one, something that they can hold onto. It's something beautiful that provides comfort."
David Finney, director of Finney's Funeral Home in New Jersey, first heard about the glittery alternative two years ago at a convention of funeral home directors. "It answers a real need. People are looking for an alternative," says Finney, who became one of about 600 LifeGem suppliers throughout the United States. He installed a display case with three rings, a necklace and several diamonds, with informational brochures beside them.
"It arouses a lot of interest," he says. "Some people say, 'It's not for me.' Others ask for more information and say that they would choose that for themselves." So far, he has had one client, a woman who had a ring made from her mother's ashes. "She was very satisfied," says Finney.
'Cut me round and brilliant'
Artist Jill Magid (www.jillmagid.net/AutoPortrait.htm) wasn't grieving when she called LifeGem and ordered a diamond. Magid, 32, who works in Amsterdam and New York, didn't want to have a dear one's remains turned into a precious stone; she was calling to order a stone made of her own ashes. Last year, she arranged to have herself posthumously transformed into a yellow diamond, for use in a work of art entitled "Auto Portrait Pending." The piece is composed of a glass case containing a black box holding a ring waiting for her diamond to be set in it when the time comes, with the relevant contracts displayed below.
"Make me a diamond when I die. Cut me round and brilliant. Weigh me at one carat. Ensure that I am real ... " she writes in the introduction to the contract with LifeGem. She goes on to say: "If I come out too small, don't enlarge me - Leave me as I am ... "
The work, until recently exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, is now traveling the world. When the final piece is added to it after her death, Magid wants the work to go to a collector or a museum and be shown in a permanent exhibit. For her family, this is no simple proposition, she says. Her father asked her if she really wanted him to have to go to MOMA in New York every time he wanted to honor her memory.
In the course of preparing the work, Magid consulted with rabbis from various streams of Judaism. "Each one of them told me that there was an absolute halakhic prohibition against cremation. But when they saw the work, they also said that it was moving and spiritual.
"A diamond is a metaphor. In our society it's a symbol of love, commitment, wealth, immortality," says Magid. "Here the metaphor becomes real. I think that the work inspires critical thinking about death, about commemoration and about the memory of death. There's a strong principle here of preserving the body as an icon. It's the essence of the fetishism of an object."
Fetishism, metaphors - Bob Valentino, Sr. isn't interested in any of that. He just wants Patti back. The inanimate circus she left behind - a ceramic pig, a wooden cat, a porcelain hen, a crystal sorcerer, miniature angels and frogs, and a clown on a seesaw suspended from the ceiling - continues to keep him company at home. And Ruby the Cat and Nicky the Dog are often curled up by his legs. But none of them can chase away his loneliness. Not even the ring.
People have been supportive of his choice, says Valentino, and a few people have also asked him for LifeGem's phone number. His youngest daughter promised to make him into a diamond after his death, too. The thought makes him happy. "How else is a father supposed to feel when his daughter proposes such a thing?" he asks. The only thing that concerns him is that in such a situation, they will have to remove the ring with Patti's ashes in it from his finger.
Perhaps the ring is making it harder for him to move on? "No. It's as if she's giving me her blessing. Our relationship was nearly flawless. There will never be another Patti." He gazes at the ring. "Some days are harder than others. Sometimes I think that I'm going mad. But I think that I'm a little calmer since I've had this. She would have loved it, even though it's expensive. It cost over $3,000. I think that they're exploiting people, because a ring like this should cost much less. But when you're in such a state you don't think about the price. I haven't even taken it to a jeweler yet for an appraisal. Not that it matters. I'll do it sometime. Ever since Patti died, I haven't felt like doing anything. Everything I did was for her."
He isn't worried about losing the ring. "I haven't taken it off once since I got it," he says. "She's with me all the time."
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