Everett artist creates memories that never fade

Linda Huffman searched and searched through the ash until her tweezers uncovered the prize: A tiny piece of bone shaped exactly like a heart.

With a jeweler's precision, she delicately placed the bone in the middle of the colored glass pieces and smiled with satisfaction.

That heart-shaped bone had belonged to an 18-year-old Louisiana soldier killed in Afghanistan. His cremated remains were sent to Huffman's art studio by the soldier's Army buddy who wanted to keep a token of his hero close to his own heart: the dead man's spirit fused forever in a pendant.

Huffman is in the business of preserving memories. The Everett artist takes the cremated remains of people and pets and nestles their precious pieces of bone into pretty glass pendants.

So when she finds a true treasure like a heart-shaped bone, Huffman feels pride mixed with a sense of peace. This is, after all, Huffman's passion.

“I found my niche. It only took me all these years,” said the 63-year-old Huffman.

Since she began hand-crafting memorial jewelry six years ago, Huffman has sold more than 2,000 memorial pendants, with Internet sales launching her business internationally. And though she has made regular jewelry before, creating cremation jewelry meant clearing some hurdles.

First, there was becoming comfortable handling people's remains.

“I ask people to send me photographs of the deceased person,” Huffman said while sitting in her studio behind her house in Lowell. “Just the idea of opening up ash and working with somebody, and without a photo you don't know what it is. It could be a horse or a bird or a person, and I like to be able to look at the person and say ‘Wow, you were loved.' ”

Much trickier was learning to help people deal with loss.

“As people started sending in orders and sending in photographs and a little description of how so-and-so was such a wonderful fisherman or such a wonderful dad, I would talk with people who were having trouble coping. After talking with them they would say ‘I feel better,' and I would say ‘Good. That's the whole idea.' ”

Though practice has made Huffman better at counseling, it doesn't really get easier, especially when it comes to babies.

“That's a toughy,” Huffman said.

Huffman pointed to a photograph, thumbtacked to a shelf, of a 10-day-old baby. The father called Huffman devastated: The baby had just died, and they had no clue why.

Huffman told the man she had lost her first two babies late in her pregnancies. She wanted the grieving father to know she would take good care of his baby's ashes, which he sent to Huffman by overnight delivery.

“He said that's what he wanted to hear. That this wasn't a production line,” Huffman said.

Huffman began her memorial jewelry business to help deal with her own grief. She had lost her beloved boxer, Daisy, to cancer. Huffman and husband and business partner Chuck got Daisy for the grandkids when she was a pup.

When Daisy died, Huffman had her cremated. Huffman recalled she would always pass by the box with Daisy's ashes and give it a little pat. She began wanting something more intimate, so she fused some of Daisy's remains into a glass pendant.

“I found it comforting to be able to rub it, and times like when I'm stuck in traffic, now I have my dog with me,” Huffman said.

Soon she was making pendants for friends. Once the Huffmans began advertising on the Internet, the business took off.

The practice of wearing mourning jewelry has been around for a while, providing the living with that important tactile connection to their departed loved ones, said grief counselor Jinny Tesik, who has treated many clients who have worn such keepsakes.

The service that Huffman provides goes beyond the pendants: She lends a sympathetic ear to her grieving customers and doesn't admonish them for feeling sad, said Tesik, a counselor since 1982 who now works in south Snohomish County and Shoreline.

“We're a death-denying society,” Tesik said. “We do not want to talk about it, and we change the subject.”

Huffman is immersed in the topic of death.

When searching through remains, Huffman said she always looks for bones; cremations are done in a cardboard box, so if Huffman doesn't pick the bone, she can't be sure if she's getting the person or the box.

The heart-shaped bone for the man whose friend died in combat was a special find for Huffman. The Army infantryman had been killed in Afghanistan when a bomb struck his vehicle.

His buddy had written Huffman telling her that this hero had been his best friend since kindergarten and that they were always together until his buddy joined the Army.

The friend requested glass pieces in the pendant be in the colors purple, green and blue. The man said he was going to hang the pendant on a cord around his neck.

“With this pendant,” the man wrote, “he will forever be with me.”

Memorial jewelry

Memorial pieces cost between $94.95 and $219.95. For more information, go to Linda Huffman Studios at www.memorypendants.huffmanstudios.com or call Huffman at 425-252-2742.

Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424; goffredo@heraldnet.com.