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Best Memorial Technology

Top Six Memorial Technology Tools to Remember a Loved One

Like me and many other families who have lost a loved one, I was unaware of many of the new, best, and most innovative memorial technology options available for helping families plan a funeralburial, cremation, or even serve as an added value to their end of life planning. 

Each of these wonderful new memorial technology tools allow families to remember their loved ones.

They also provide a much better opportunity for individuals and families to heal from the inevitable grief and loss associated from losing a loved one.

You can find more information about each of these six new memorial technology options by visiting the following extremely educational and FREE family-focused online resource center: 

MemorialTechnology.com:

Click each picture below to learn more:

 Memorial Reefs
For loved ones who were in the Navy, divers, sailors, swimmers, or other types of sea lovers, memorial reefs are becoming very popular option for final resting places for cremations.
 Memorial Diamond
Rather than storing a loved ones ashes in the traditional cremation urn, many families are choosing memorial jewelry such as a memorial diamond and many other creative opportunities.
 Memorial Website
Memorial websites allow people to come to together in one place on the internet and post thoughts, poems, pictures, funeral flowers, video tribute, stories, donations, and much more.
 Video Tribute
By creating and combining a series of pictures to tell a loved ones story, with beautiful special funeral music, a video tribute is one of the most helpful and healing additions to a memorial service, as well as a priceless keepsake.
 Gravestone Technology
Instead of just a name and date, gravestone technology is becoming a very common addition for cemetery gravestones, monuments, and tombstones to tell the story of someone special.
Funeral Webcasting
When family, friends, or co-workers cannot attend a funeral, funeral webcasting is becoming an extremely popular option for people to attend a LIVE funeral online via the internet as another way of coping with grief and loss.

Grave Headstone Monuments Tombstone Memorial

Grave Headstone, Tombstones and Monuments Memorial

What to Put on a Grave Headstone, Monuments,

Grave Marker, or Personalized Memorial?

Losing a loved one is hard.  Honoring that loved one after they are gone can be just as hard.  The first step is choosing what to say on the memorial for a grave headstone, grave marker, or any other type of monuments.

What Do You Want to Say About Your Loved One?

You could mention their time served in the military or their relationships to the family.  You could incorporate some of their favorite hobbies or passions.  Over the years we’ve seen a lot of memorable quotes and sayings.

Grave Headstone

Here are just a few that you might use as inspiration:

“An officer and gentleman, he touched the lives of many with a hug, a smile, humor, and a generous spirit. Rest, my dear father, in God’s loving embrace.” ~ Donna Shackelford Jones

“Grieve not, nor speak of me with tears, but laugh and talk of me as if I were beside you there.” ~ Isla Paschal Richardson

“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” ~ Helen Keller

When choosing a saying, you might ask yourself, would your loved one like this and does it reflect their impact on the world?

What are Your Options When Designing a Memorial?

Once the text is chosen, you’ll need to consider the design.  There are numerous options for engraving and designing a custom headstone or marker.  Elements like font size and color greatly impact the design of the memorial.  If you’re working with a custom headstone designer, you’ll want to defer to them for the best font choice.  Your designer will also be able to determine the best layout so everything is easy to read and well balanced.

There are also other options when choosing a custom headstone or memorial.  For instance, do you want to have a vase, religious symbol, or even a picture on the monument?  These questions should be brought up with your funeral director and cemetery coordinator.  To keep track of these answers you might want to download the Cemetery Regulations Checklist, put together by Quiring Monuments.

Remember to keep in mind the purpose of the memorial, whether it’s a grave headstone, grave marker, cremation memorial, or any other type of personalized monuments, it should represent your lost loved one and be a place for the family to remember them fondly.

Cremation Memorial Reefs Now in Texas

Green Funeral

Eternal Reefs Adds New Memorial Reef Site

New cremation memorial reef to be located in Galveston, Texas.

The new Texas location makes the twentieth approved site for the company to offer an eco-friendly alternative to spreading the ashes of a loved one:  participation in the preparation and placement of an individually-designed memorial reef ball that contributes to a new ecosystem.

An Eternal Reefs “memorial reefs” looks like a huge, hollow concrete ball with Swiss cheese holes specially designed to entice fish and other forms of sea life into the reef, building new habitats in and around the uneven structure.  Eternal Reefs takes cremated remains and incorporates them into an environmentally safe cast cement mixture weighing between 600 pounds (2’ high x 4’ wide) and 4500 pounds (4’ high x 6’ wide).

Eternal Reefs encourages family members and friends to become involved in creating their loved one’s memorial reef. If they wish, family members can mix the concrete and remains and have the opportunity to personalize the Eternal Reef with handprints, written messages and other memorabilia in the damp concrete. The entire Eternal Reefs process is designed to be a positive and healing experience for the families and the sea.

“While many people who participate in our programs have been vitally connected to the ocean their entire life, we get to memorialize people who just like the idea of making a meaningful contribution to the health of the planet and to benefit future generations,” George Frankel, Eternal Reefs CEO, said.  “We find it provides great joy for everyone involved to know their loved one will be surrounded by marine life and to know they leave behind an environmentally-sustainable, living legacy.”

Memorial reefs have become a solution for the “shelf people” crisis across the country.  An astonishing 45 percent of families that have chosen cremation still have their loved ones remains sitting on a shelf or in a closet.  Thousands of individuals pass away unexpectedly and don’t leave a will, leaving the next generation to handle their remains.  Eternal Reefs offers a final resting place for these individuals.

With every Memorial Reef, the executor of the estate receives two memorial certificates that identify the longitude and latitude of the memorials, which are marked with bronze plaques.  Loved ones can participate in every step of the Memorial Reef process and gather for the reef casting, viewing and placement ceremonies.  Throughout the year, families and friends often return to the memorial reef site to dive, fish or visit by boat.

The new reef site off Galveston, Texas will have its first memorial service and placement November 12, 2010 at Barr’s Reef, 11 miles off the water break in Galveston Bay.   It is anticipated the families of about 15 people will participate in the activities.

About Eternal Reefs Inc.
Eternal Reefs, Inc is an Atlanta-based company that provides creative environmentally enhancing means to memorialize the cremated remains of a loved one. The company incorporates cremated remains into a concrete mixture used to cast artificial reef formations. The artificial reefs are dedicated as permanent memorials while also bolstering natural coastal reef formations. Since 1998, the company has placed more than 300 Memorial Reefs in 20 locations off the coasts of Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia, substantially increasing the ocean’s diminishing reef systems.  Memorial reefs can only go in properly permitted locations by the US Government.  Contact Eternal Reefs Inc.

 

Why Cremation Memorials Are Popular

Cremation Memorials

Cremation Memorials Help the Bereaved

Psychologists and counselors have been researching the effects of grief and loss with more frequency over the past century.  They are finding tangible positive effects of bereavement on the family members.  The positive healing effect can be explained when it is recognized that art expresses that which cannot be expressed through just words.  Grief often lies beyond words, beyond simple explanations of our conscience minds.  It is in the unconscious that expression of deep wounds and tragedy of loss is found.  Grief cannot be reduced to the rationale.  Art can speak to us and facilitate the connection with what is going on inside of our minds as we grieve to help us through the process.

Julie A. Burn, Director of Cremation Services for the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association, says today’s families have more choices than ever before. “It’s important for families to take the time to grieve their loss and to find a way to remember the life that was lived, regardless of whether they are choosing cremation or traditional funeral and burial,” Burn said. “Today’s cremation services offer many ways to honor the deceased, and so I would encourage families to be sure to ask the funeral home and the cemetery what their options are for creating tributes and memorials that are personalized and have meaning to them.”

It is expected that the Funeral Directors become an active part of the presentation of the Cremation Memorial in order to facilitate these benefits.

The Funeral Directors are expected to:

  • Become educated on the processes involved with creating the memorials
  • Gain a personal confidence in the company creating the memorials
  • Getting the sample of the cremated remains to the artist
  • Receive back the remainder of the cremated remains when the work is complete

Adding the additional service as an option to the families adds an additional source of income to add to the bottom line of the business.  The artisans producing the memorials typically recognize that the contributions of the Funeral Director are essential in making the transaction.  When the Funeral Directors have invested time into learning about the product and are able to represent the benefits to the family and confidence in the company handling the cremated remains that is when the families really consider the option.  Additional value is added to the families when the handling of the cremated remains is taken care of too.  The samples of remains are sent to the artist and the remaining cremated remains are received back when the work is complete.

Types of Cremation Memorials

Several new memorial technology options have been used as a medium to incorporate cremated remains, for example:

Memorial Diamonds

Man made diamonds are molecularly identical to naturally occurring diamonds.  By recreating the forces of nature to the primary element of all diamonds, carbon, a diamond can be made.  General Electric first pioneered this technology in the mid 1950’s.

By using the carbon from the cremated remains or a lock of hair, memorial diamonds can be created to forever encase the cremated ashes in a unique and beautiful memorial.

To create the memorial diamond, the carbon is heated to extremely high temperatures.  This step removes the existing ash and converts the carbon to graphite with the unique characteristics and elements that will create the diamond.  The graphite is then placed in a press capable of replicating the forces in the earth, heat and pressure.  The pressure needed is nearly 1,000,000 psi and the temperatures are up to 3000 degrees centigrade.  In approximately 70 days, depending on the size of the memorial diamond you wish to create, the resulting rough diamond crystal grows.  When the rough diamond is ready, skilled diamond cutters facet the memorial diamond according to the families’ selection.  The diamonds can be inspected and graded by trained gemologists, the same process used by the world’s finest jewelers.

These memorial diamonds are typically available in sizes from .25 ct. to 1.5 ct.  The colors that these memorial diamonds can be created range from blue to red to yellow to green.

Keepsake Jewelry

Keepsake jewelry is a small urn that can be worn as jewelry or hung in a display.  It has a small area inside to hold a memorial to the loved one, like cremated remains for example.  Keepsakes were first introduced by Madelyn Pendants in 1992.  Joni Cullen and Lisa Saxer-Buros created keepsakes when they lost their friend and mother Madelyn Saxer.   From Madelyn Saxer’s zest for living and her ability to embrace death, the concept of the Keepsake Pendant was born: A symbol of continuing love, a reassuring remembrance to keep close to one’s heart.  In creating the pendant line, they had a simple purpose: to enable others to cope more easily, to hold a source of comfort in their hands and to find peace in their hearts.  The keepsakes were initially intended for cremains but Joni and Lisa soon realized that was limiting the benefits of the keepsakes which also hold locks of hair, funeral flowers and other personal items.

The death care industry has used the term Keepsakes for so long now that it has come to be synonymous with all Cremation Memorials.  When Madelyn Pendants started marketing the keepsakes there were no other cremation memorial options available to the families.  They had to coin the term because there was not a name for the niche yet.  The acceptance to the keepsakes has been steadily growing since they were introduced.  If initiation is flattery then Joni and Lisa have been flattered.  Today there are a number of companies producing and marketing keepsake jewelry.

Keepsake Urns

Once keepsake jewelry started to catch on there was a recognition that the families could benefit from Cremation Memorials.  The urn companies began introducing lines of small urns.  The small urns, keepsake urns were designed to hold a portion of the cremated remains.  The funeral directors and urn resellers were able to fill the need of the families to provide a way to create multiple memorials to the loved ones.  Family members do not all live around the same cemetery or crematorium, in fact they often live in different cities and states.  The families still have the natural need to for a memorial.  Cremation urns fill this need perfectly.  Families often request several keepsake urns for all the family members.

Cremation urns come in as many forms and shapes and made of as many materials as urns have come to be found in.  And the variety is increasing.

Cremation Painting

Cremated remains are combined with the paint used to create a memorial painting.  The artists can paint a portrait of the loved one, a landscape or still life that invokes memories of the loved one.  Because the art is individually commissioned the size, form and subject can be personalized to the families needs.  This is one of the newest Cremation Memorial mediums that have come available to families.  It is testament to the even larger variety of memorialization options that families will be presented in the future.

Memorial Pottery

Pottery work that incorporates cremated remains into the clay or into the glaze that become the memorial.  As with the Cremation Paintings, the pottery form of memorialization takes on a very personal nature.  The individually commissioned pieces are designed to reflect the essence of the loved one as well as contain the cremated remains.