Turns out there’s quite a selection of keepsake jewelry, which are essentially mini urns to be worn on one’s person, usually as a pendant on a necklace. I stumbled across a place called Jewelry Keepsakes (http://www.jewelrykeepsakes.com), which has a HUGE selection of such items in practically any design or look someone may want. Ones shaped like little footballs, to animals, to infinity signs, all the way to super-simple more modern looks. Some even come in gold and stuff. I love Geoffrey, and maybe in the future I’ll upgrade his pendant, but for now, no gold, buddy. I still gotta take care of Half-n-Half, after all.
So I decided on this piece, which was pretty damned close to what I had envisioned. At first I was going to go with something transparent like glass, but looking at my necklace (platinum), I decided if I could get something in a silver or steel-type colour which was low-profile and somewhat modern-ish but still not huge or a weird shape, that’d work. I figured it would be a pain in the ass finding something like that, which is why I had kind of said, “Well, I’m betting I won’t find anything quite like what I’d want, so I’d be OK with a small glass bottle” or whatever. Like I said, there’s a lot of these things, and it kind of makes sense to have them available.
The top opens/can be unscrewed, has a nice small space for his ashes, and they even send a kit consisting of a funnel, a couple of sticks, and some sealant (to essentially super-glue the lid shut) with it for free. Plus there was a ten dollars off coupon I found with about 10 seconds of Google searching (the coupon code is “10off”, I believe, without the quotation marks, if you decide you want to get something from there). Small, not overly showy or gaudy, and it kind of reminds me of Geoffrey’s own … bulbousness. I also got a few cheaper small glass bottle pendants to give to a few key individuals in Geoffrey’s life, and they can choose to do what they want with his ashes. That should all come together next week.
The crematory delivered Geoffrey’s ashes to me about an hour or so ago. I wasn’t sure if they were going to mail them, which for human cremated remains is allowed as long as you notify them of what’s inside and it’s packaged properly. Like double-bagged in plastic and stuff. Turns out one cannot send human cremated remains using FedEx or UPS (assuming they know what’s in there); I’m guessing it’s partly due to insurance and/or it’s just easier to make a blanket policy and avoid any and all potential problems when dealing with such precious cargo. However, I don’t know what the deal is with animal cremated remains, so I originally figured they’d show up in the mail. Yesterday they called and told me they’d be here this morning, which was kind of nice, actually. That way everyone knows exactly where the ashes were and that they did in fact attempt to deliver them, meaning there was no potential of the remains getting lost in the mail somewhere.
So Geoffrey’s back home, he’s lost a lot of weight and takes up less space now. He’s in a small paint can-type container which has a nice tight lid on it. I did open it up to say hello, and there’s a fair amount of coarse material in there, so I’ll probably have to sift some of him for the pendant(s). I’m sure he won’t mind. Half-n-Half sniffed at the box for a moment and then didn’t really seem to care, which is at least better than her being scared off by it for whatever reason. So the two are sort of reunited once again, peas in a pod, an unbroken set in a more spiritual way than before, obviously. I don’t know what I’ll do with the bulk of the remains, but they’re in a nice, safe, secure container in a box with a very hard-to-miss fabric on it, so when the time comes …
Good to have you home, Geoffrey. I hope you’re feeling well.
