So the students, all fired up and motivated by a desire to fulfill a lonely man's last wishes, started a campaign. Today, students and ninth-graders in a Rabun High School shop class are building Green a pine casket, getting plans and measurements off the Internet. An Elberton granite company donated a headstone. A country church gave a cemetery plot. A funeral home director offered a cut-rate service. Gas stations and shops displayed gallon jugs to collect donations for the "Green" burial fund.
In the meanwhile, Green collapsed with a bad case of pneumonia and is under hospice care; but is happy that he will die a dignified death. Unknown to him, as he goes to meet his Maker, he has probably taught the students something no school can teach...
Finally, despite such heartfelt efforts, at making someone's death meaningful, people have actually managed to commercialize death and dying, supposedly in the spirit of free enterprise.
A company called LifeGem in Chicago will convert your Ashes into Diamonds, giving a new twist to the oft-repeated,"Dust thou art, to dust returneth".
Turns out that the company uses intense heat and pressure to grow diamonds from the carbon ash of cremated remains - human or animal. Twelve Florida funeral homes - and two Florida jewelers - now offer the "diamond service".
Converting the dear-departed into a jewel, is actually a cheaper proposition. Turns out, that cremation with no services and an urn, can cost around $670. A typical, traditional funeral with visitation, mass and cremation casket can cost upwards of $5,000. And costs of burial plots vary.
Compare this with turning the recently departed into a diamond, for around $3000 .
A technician collects about 8 ounces of the ashes and mails them to a laboratory on the East Coast. This stuff is then processed in a low oxygen environment and converted to graphite. This is then subjected to about 3,500 degrees of heat and 800,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, in a diamond press. (This kind of pressure is similar to what you would feel, if a block of concrete, three feet across and 2,000 miles high , is dropped on your toe.) In about six to eight months of this, a crystal is grown, which is then polished,cut and finally becomes, what you and I call, a diamond.
And just in case you think the stone is flawed, the company explains that since we are not flawless in life, how could we be flawless in death ? It certainly sometimes reflects, in the stone quality.
As a death "celebration", religious bodies have had sharp reactions to this, all fairly uncomplimentary.
At the end of the day, one may ask, that if death signifies end of a life, should we be celebrating the "life", by following some good things the person taught us over the years? Should we be celebrating the "death", by converting the person into a shining tangible thing, subjecting the remains to unimaginable pressures...?
Isn't it ironic, that they say "Diamond are forever", but to become one, you need to die and get excruciatingly processed first?
