Precious Life

LifeGem, girl’s best friend and timeless memorial of those who have passed

By Neela Banerjee
AsianWeek

Death doesn’t give you a lot of choices. When a loved one passes away you can bury them in the ground and visit their grave periodically, or you can cremate them, passing their powdery ashes from generation to generation in an oversized urn designed to be placed on mantles.

Greg Herro and his partners want to give you choices.

“One day my partners and I were discussing our mortality and the options we had did not give us the spiritual connections our loved ones deserved,” Herro said from his Chicago office. “We wanted something that would allow us to continue to celebrate life on a daily basis.”

So, Herro and company came up with the LifeGem, a high-quality, colored diamond made from, well, your loved ones themselves. Herro explained that since diamonds come from carbon and carbon is the building block of life, the idea is actually quite elementary.

“We wanted the item to be unique and personal, we wanted to have something that the family members could have with them at all times and we wanted an endless heirloom,” Herro said.

LifeGem also capitalizes on the rising number of cremations that happen in the United States. According to the Cremation Association of North America, the number of cremations has tripled since 1973 to more than 700,000 in 2000. While the national rate of cremations is 26 percent, Western states like California have rates that shoot up to nearly 50 percent. This may be attributed to Asian Pacific American traditions of cremation, which in certain cultures and religions are 100 percent.

Turning your loved one into a precious stone can be done in four easy steps. First, the cremation must be done in a special way in order to collect the carbon properly. Then the ashes go back to the family and the carbon is delivered, in a special container, to the LifeGem lab. Next the carbon is purified to graphite and put into a special diamond press, where it is subjected to extreme amounts of heat and pressure. “We basically replicate the forces of the earth,” Herro said.

Your loved one comes out of this process as a diamond in the rough and is shaped into splendor by LifeGems artisans. All in all, the process takes two months. Ranging from one-quarter to one and one-half karats, the LifeGem is certified by the world’s foremost gemologists at the European Gemological Laboratory in New York. According to press materials, the LifeGem is now produced exclusively in blue, though future options will include red and yellow. Most people put the diamonds into jewelry, rings and necklaces being the most popular.

LifeGem, which formed in 2001 after three years of research on the diamond-making process, charges just under $2000 for this unique memory of those who have passed.

And like any good business, the price goes down when you buy more than one.

And just how many LifeGems can one person make?

“We can make up to 100 diamonds from one individual,” Herro said.

For more information, go to www.lifegem.com.