My sister-in-law passed away recently.  She was only 50 years old. She leaves behind her husband of 23 years, and her four children at their vast farm.   Before she passed away, she expressed her final wishes to her family, one of them being cremation.  She asked her family to cremate her body then spread the ashes somewhere in the Smokey Mountains.

Last week I received a phone call from her husband.   He and the children are having a tough time because there is no place they can go to reflect on her life and talk to her.  Although they obeyed her wishes, their wish is to have a memorial.  With her name on the stone, and a carving of one of the many art pieces she’s created, they will have a place to visit with her in spirit.

This story is not the first of its kind that I have heard. Being in the memorial business, I hear this story more and more often.  Memorials are not only for the person(s) who has passed, they are for the ones who are here and grieving.

I always thought I wanted to be cremated and my ashes spread somewhere. I’ve changed my mind in recent years. When it’s my time to go, I leave behind children and grandchildren.  Yes, they will have memories, but a special place to visit, and seeing my name I’m sure will mean so much to them.  It means a lot to me seeing my dad’s stone, and my brother’s stone, and having a quiet place for reflection.  If it is important to me, I’m sure it will also be for the ones who love me.

When you work somewhere for a long time, you get really used to your surroundings and sometimes the motions are mechanical.  I’ve been working at Dodds for 18 years now, and most of my coworkers have been here that long or longer. We do the same thing every day…process orders and manufacture memorials. That’s what we do, and we do it well. We are a family at Dodds, and we all have our own families to go home to. We are not exempt from the experience we see families go through every day.  In 2005, I lost my oldest brother, and 11 months later, his wife.  It affected several people who work with me because I work with family. My second oldest brother owns the company, his son/my nephew is the president. My sister’s husband is the memorialist in Xenia, and his son/my nephew works in the office and is the one that orders all the granite.  So when my brother and his wife died, all of us were grieving.  We ordered a memorial for them and when it arrived, we all wanted to be a part of its production and making sure everything was done the way we wanted it.  What I observed is that my brother’s stone was processed and completed in the exact same manner that all the other stones that go through our plant. There was no “special” care taken just because it was the owner’s brother and a family member to so many of us who work here. That made me feel so good about the work we do.  Every stone is special, and the employees take great care to make sure it is done the way families want it done. It doesn’t matter who the memorial is for, someone is grieving for that loved one, and my co-workers understand that the process is not “mechanical”, its heart felt. Just one more reason why I love my job, and the people I work with.

Have you ever noticed there is usually a cemetery scene in the movies you watch?  Perhaps I notice them more because I am in the memorial industry.  It’s like when you buy a new car that you never really noticed on the roadways until you own one, and wow, they are all over the place! I’m like that with the movies. I am amazed by how many cemetery scenes there are, and when they show a close up of a memorial I always tell my husband what type of granite it is.

I said all that to say this: The memorial for the person in the movie is usually there either at the time of the funeral, or very shortly thereafter with the date of death already on the stone.  I wish we could create a memorial that quickly for families, but it just can’t be done.  Most families that visit our company are unaware of the process involved in getting a memorial placed.  After the selection is made, we order the granite from the quarry that produces the selected granite. These quarries are located all over the world.  If the granite is quarried in our continent, we usually get a standard shape in about 45 days.  If on another continent, it can take up to 90 days to receive it. Once it arrives at our plant in Xenia, then it falls into the order by which we produce, by date or by date due.

If you already have a memorial in the cemetery that just needs a date added, we do that as well. Cemetery engraving can only be done when it is not so cold outside. We usually begin our engraving in March and continue to the end of October. Since there are over 300 cemeteries in the greater Dayton area, engravings are sorted by cemetery, then by what area the cemetery is located.  We start in one area and continue on into the other areas. It could possibly take up to 6 or 8 weeks to get the engraving done, depending on when we received the order for the engraving, and when we go to that particular area. Sometimes we receive phone calls where someone will tell us that “Aunt Lillie passed away a year ago and her stone still does not have the final date on it”. Unfortunately we don’t know to engrave the stone unless we are notified by a member of the family, or the funeral home if that had previously been arranged.

I hope this information has helped you to understand our process a little better.  Information is very important and we try to give you as much information as possible. Well, that’s it for my first blog. I don’t know how often I am going to add blogs, but as situations arise, I will try to pass more information on to you.