I am guilty of saving baby's first curls in my children's baby books. I even got a kick out of seeing my mother's curls that were saved by my grandmother.
I know it was fashionable to wear locks of hair from loved ones during the civil war and since photos were rare I understand that.
I'm just not quite sure how I feel about wearing jewelry filled with the ashes of dead relatives.
I know people have cherished pieces of saints bones for centuries. I think they view them as good luck pieces that might grant miracles to the lucky few. Whether or not I believe that is up for grabs.
I loved my brother's funeral where we were all encouraged to take handfuls of his ashes and scatter them around his farm. It seemed fitting to put him back on the land he loved.
Yet I never wanted to wear his ashes in a locket, bracelet or pin as a memento. It feels almost wrong to me, as if I am keeping a tiny bit of him from returning to the nature he loved so much. I know that is crazy too.
It just feels macabre to me to wear someone's body on my body. I think part of that is the story of the mother whose child died and who couldn't stop crying afterwards. Finally she had a dream that her child was struggling to carry buckets of tears over and over and over. Just another story or superstition perhaps, but it touched me deeply.
Wherever my loved ones go after this life I want them to be as free as possible to be what they are supposed to be.
Whatever that is.
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