Hannah the Malamute was always there for Candace Nixon.
The 35-year-old marketing agency owner from Austin, TX adopted her dog when she was a puppy and during their 13 years together, Hannah was always at her side, through four different cities, nine house moves, five jobs, college and everything that life threw at her through her twenties and thirties.
“She was always there, waiting to welcome me home,” Nixon told The Post. “She stood by me, loving me unconditionally.”
When Hannah passed away in October 2022, Nixon wanted to do something to keep her memory alive – so she had her ashes made into a diamond ring by a local company, Eterneva.
“I look at it every day and am reminded of all the beautiful experiences she brought to my life, feeling a sense of peace and gratitude that’s hard to put into words,” she said.
Eterneva is one of a growing number of companies taking the ashes of loved ones – human or animal – and turning them into something more tangible for people to cherish. These tech entrepreneurs have revolutionized so-called “DeathTech,” changing the way we process what happens after the final curtain.
Ashes to masses
In the last 50 years, the popularity of cremation has increased markedly in the United States.
According to the Cremation Association of North America, 60.6% of Americans are now cremated when they die, up from just 5.69% in 1975. And it’s forecast that by 2035, 80% of Americans will be cremated.
All Eterneva needs is around half a cup of the deceased’s ashes, or hair, from which they can extract and purify the carbon, before placing it in a machine that mimics the pressure and heat conditions from under the Earth’s crust to create a unique diamond.
To date, they have created over 4,000 diamonds, including ones for celebrity clients like Bret Michaels and Kenny Chesney and, as the CEO Adelle Archer explained, it’s especially popular with a younger demographic. “It’s a generation that has a much more open-minded relationship with death,” she said.
“People are becoming increasingly secular which means they’re seeking out personalization and meaning as opposed to just adhering to traditions when it comes to end-of-life rituals.”
Austin resident David Blake started his business, Spirit Pieces, in 2015, initially as an international ash scattering concept but it soon became apparent that customers wanted a more physical token of a person’s memory to treasure.
Now they produce a wide range of jewelry and ornate ornaments using ashes. “When you hear quotes like ‘My son always kisses his father goodnight’ with his father’s ashes in a bedside orb, you know such items have a real impact,” he said.
DeathTech
As Blake explains, there is also a growing market for bespoke pieces, with some requests more unusual than others.
Recently, they were asked if they could make a 2-foot-high palm tree in glass incorporating a person’s ashes. “It would have been amazing, but we couldn’t see how we would be able to ship it across the country without breaking so we had to turn down the project,” said Blake.
One Spirit Pieces employee, Jen Hasseler, lost her mother recently and decided to use some of her ashes to create a unique piece.
“My mother was my best friend. She was an incredible, beautiful, funny woman of unshakeable strength and conviction, and I believe she would smile knowing her remains are infused into something so beautiful that brings peace,” the 54-year-old said. “It’s about having tangible things with me to help ease the pain.”
What Eterneva and Spirit Pieces prove is that people don’t just want to leave an urn on a shelf.
It’s why Jason Leach’s business, And Vinyly, is booming.
Based in Scarborough, England, Leach takes ashes and presses them into custom-made vinyl records, complete with voice recordings of the deceased and some of their favorite music. The record cover and inner sleeve also feature photographs and memories of the person and he now has clients across the world, including many in the United States.
With a background in the music industry, Leach’s brainwave was inspired, in part, by his family’s attempts to scatter his great-grandfather’s ashes. “They were taken out to sea but they threw them in the wrong direction and the wind blew them back into everyone’s faces,” he says.
It was also inspired by writer Hunter S. Thompson, who died in 2005.
“I had heard about how he had his ashes put in a firework and blasted into the sky and it got me thinking what I would want,” he says. “And then it struck me that I’d love my great-great-grandchildren to have a record with me on it and be able to hear me talk.”
While most clients visit And Vinyly after the death of their friend or relative, increasing numbers are now planning their own records ahead of the fateful day. “I think that’s lovely,” adds Leach.
“And that’s the good thing about death – it teaches you to live.”
Back to life
Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, has also seen huge advances in what can be done to preserve the presence of those who have departed.
Amazon’s Alexa, for instance, can read bedside stories in the voice of relatives who have passed away while Microsoft has patented a chatbot – or “ghostbot” – that can digitally “resurrect” the dead, using old social media video and voice posts to recreate an online presence for the bereaved to interact with.
But it doesn’t have to be quite so spooky.
Dr. Stephen D. Smith is the co-founder and former chief executive of StoryFile, a Los Angeles tech company that specializes in holographic conversations. As the co-founder of the UK’s National Holocaust Centre and Museum, Smith originally planned to use his technology to preserve the memories of those who survived the Holocaust, but its wider application soon became apparent.
StoryFile creates digital clones of people by using 20 synchronized cameras to record them answering a series of questions which is then processed using AI to help create natural responses to questions after they’ve died. The tech made headlines when it was used at the late actor Ed Asner’s memorial service in 2022.
Smith even used it when his mother, Marina Smith, died that same year.
Prior to her death, she spent several hours recording answers from StoryFile’s database of 250,000 questions and, at her funeral, was able to answer some of the questions that mourners had, creating the illusion of actual conversation.
Last week, he also created a StoryFile for his father-in-law who passed away recently. “I found it refreshing and meaningful to engage with his StoryFile,” he says. “It was a touching reminder of what a great character he was.
“Something like a living digital talking photo album.”
For Candace Nixon, who named her marketing agency Wise Wolf Consulting as a nod to Hannah, her unique creation is a permanent reminder not just of her dog Hannah but of something much deeper.
“It represents love, and if someone looks closely under a jeweler’s microscope, they’ll see the inscription I chose: ‘How lucky am I?’ from the A.A. Milne quote, “How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.’
“Just because she is gone, it doesn’t mean the love goes anywhere.”
