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Paralegals & Legal Secretaries

: Practical Paralegalism

Former Paralegal Sells Eternal Vessels

By Lynne DeVenny

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If you're uncomfortable reading about my dying wishes, then just skip this post. But remember, this is the paralegal who loves to read obituaries, and still fondly remembers a funeral for a beloved family friend where a gospel choir had everyone bawling one minute and then up and dancing in the aisles the next.

But I want to be cremated, because I have terrible claustrophobia, and even though I understand it would be a non-issue at that point, I do not want to molder in a coffin for eternity. I swear my ghost would be beating on the lid to get out. I can't even stand open MRI machines.

I also want to be cremated so my ashes can be put on the mantle, and I can continue to hang out with my family. But it's got to be a good-looking container that will look really nice on the mantle, and that my family can afford, since it's looking doubtful that I will have any valuable worldly goods to leave anyone.

After my maternal grandmother died, we were eating a buffet-style breakfast, when my uncle, who never missed an opportunity for a joke (and also made this awesome drink called "Bob Tea," essentially pouring any fruit juice in the house into a pitcher of iced tea), announced that grandmother was enjoying the buffet, too. He wasn't joking. He had thoughtfully placed the small, cheap, plain black plastic container of her ashes provided by the funeral home discreetly among the many, many casserole dishes brought by friends and family. (We're lucky no one sprinkled her over their Eggs Benedict.) My aunt was not amused. Given my aunt's unfailing good taste, those ashes should have at least been presented in good company in a gorgeous cloisonne vase with a lid.

Leave it to a former paralegal to address the problem of finding tasteful, yet affordable urns for our loved ones' ashes. Teresa Westhead of Saanich, B.C., started a business, Eternal Vessels (http://www.eternalvessel.com/). The Montreal Gazette reports:

Teresa Westhead started importing decorative urns from Indonesia and Vietnam this year to give people an alternative to what she calls the often bland and higher-priced urns provided by funeral homes and the containers used by animal hospitals.
Eternal Vessel offers handmade marble, ceramic and bamboo-lacquer designs that are affordable and blend in with home decor, Westhead said. She carries more than 25 styles of cremation urns -almost all of them selling for $99 or less -about one-third of the cost of funeral home urns, Westhead said.

I'm pretty sure that plastic container my uncle brought home from the funeral parlor can be purchased for $1.63 at Walmart.

Anyways, I totally fell in love with this Two Dragonflies Lacquer Urn at Eternal Vessels for $49.99, so if I should pass from this earth unexpectedly, someone please send my hubby this post. With this urn, I think I will look awesome on the mantle.

Source: The Montreal Gazette

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on November 01, 2010 (boomark / email).