A.S.H.E.S. Life Designs - Barry Pietersen
On a cold, wintry day in 1990, just out of university, Anita and a friend were driving down a rural Ontario road travelling from one antique store to the next. As they passed through one of many picturesque little towns they saw, there on its outskirts, a graveyard. Maybe it was because Anita had been a life long urban dweller that the town seemed more desolate and the graveyard coldly remote. Maybe it was the grey, overcast skies, the chill of winter and the waning light of dusk or maybe it was all of this combined with the fundamental human dread of being absolutely alone that gave birth to the “idea.” But it was then that the thought formed in her mind that she hoped never to be placed in the cold hard earth, away from the warmth of the people she loves.
Death is probably the most difficult fact of life to come to terms with. The death of someone we love leaves a gaping hole, cleaves the heart, rips and tears at the clusters of images and memories that once represented that person in our minds. Death is the cessation of all dreams and aspirations, of memory, of the hidden history of that person, the never to be uncovered crevices. Death is the absolute end. No more joy and no more pain.
What’s more our loved ones fill an essential, inestimable place in our lives. They are a part of our reality, a part of our very self-definition. To lose them, to have to unravel them from the fabric of our lives is distressing, soul severing, tearing, disrupting. Our reality goes into upheaval, our very self-definition shifts and for some collapses in on itself. We often turn to our religion to make sense of the profound sense of loss and turn to time worn rituals to bring some comfort or solace. To say good-bye, to lay to rest, to patch the tear in the fabric of our lives we look to rituals of burial, and subsequent visits to the cemetery or cremation and the place set aside for the urn or the scattering of the cremains in a place of meaning. What Anita would like to offer is an alternative that carries its own layers of meaning, an alternate way to repair the fabric that resonates in a unique life affirming way. The idea is a consequence of Anita’s own personal wish to not be placed in a grave. The thought was too lonely for her and she thought that she’d like to be cremated and then made into a living thing, a joyous part of the ritual of the family. The creation will be a thing of beauty to be revered and thus remain a part of the family. What Anita hopes to do is to establish a new ritual that will weave the continuing spirit of our loved one into a new reality, a new everyday.
The mind surely struggles against accepting the finality of death as though to accept would be to sever a chord to that person losing them forever, utterly. But as long as there is the living to remember, death is far from final. While the body has moved on, left this world, what that person represented, the soul, the spirit, the energy with which they intertwined themselves with us continues. Their impact, their continued life, exists or resonates through us. What Anita does is to allow you to weave your loved one, the spirit of who he or she was into your daily life, to create a monument to that spirit that you can commune with as a natural part of your every day.
Anita will come into your home and talk to you about the person you love. She will listen as you describe what you remember of your loved one and what that person meant to you. You then have a choice of various artistic forms to choose from; for example, a sculpture, a painting or a book. She will take the ashes and mould it into a sculpture, mix it into the paint or the pulp make it a part of a creation that she would have created through an understanding of what the person meant to you.
This is a personal journey for Anita. What began as a vision for herself she has decided to make a possible avenue for like-minded people. She will weave your dreams, your memories of your loved one into an enduring work of art to be placed as a kind of memorial, a shrine to the life that was and still is through you and your love. As love is a continuation of that person beyond the body’s physical end so Anita’s work is a testament to that love, a memorial, a tribute, a celebration of the person that was and still is a part of your life though the manner and form are different. A monument not only to who and what they were but to how you remember them, how who they were informs who you are now.
 
 
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