Weddings can take years to organise, but funerals are usually arranged within a matter of hours, and are over in a couple of days - before the loss has even begun to be grasped by those left behind. Official memorials come later, whether they be public or private. Among them is the question of the memorial headstone.
When Englishwoman Harriet Frazer lost a beloved step-daughter, Sophie Behrens, in 1985, neither she nor her family could find the sort of memorial headstone they wanted to commemorate Sophie with. They wanted it to be one-off, beautifully-made, and to reflect something of the spirit of Sophie's character. They did not want to order something out a catalogue that could be found in countless other churchyards.
The Frazers eventually found artists who could design, cut and letter stone, and from whom they commissioned Sophie's memorial, which they loved and which helped some way towards their grieving. The experience made Frazer wonder if there were other families who would prefer to commission personalised memorial stones, made by skilled craftspeople, rather than settle for whatever standard options were available.
The result was Memorials by Artists, a charity to promote for the public benefit the arts and crafts associated with memorials, and to provide information and advice for anyone wanting to make a commission. Frazer is the director. To date, the organisation has 83 lettercarvers on its list, including three in Ireland, and they have created many beautiful memorials which are works of art in themselves. Pending funding, they hope to run masterclass workshops in Ireland in the near future for people interested in lettercarving. When the bereaved family contacts the organisation, they are invited to give as much detail as possible about their deceased relative. Letters, photographs, and phonecalls are exchanged. The artist who designs the piece will discuss it all with the family, and make his or her own suggestions.
Materials used include granite, slate, oak, Portland stone and Kilkenny limestone. Each piece is priced individually, but the price usually ranges from £1,200 to £3,000 sterling, which includes the organisation's fee and the installation of the piece.
Commissions usually take about a year, during which the artist will liase with the family, come up with ideas or adapt the family's own ideas, source the right piece of stone and then work on it. They will incorporate into the piece some details which recall the spirit of the lost person: a mother is remembered through her profession of hairdressing, with an intricate Celtic cross in the form of scissors and comb; a child's name is garlanded by the flowers she loved; a musician has a guitar carved very simply on the back of his stone.
Among the people this side of the water who have commissioned a memorial (artist Joe Hemming) are Ros and Stewart Hamilton of Burnfoot, Co Donegal. "It was for our son David. He died of a heart complaint at 33. He was a very special person, and we thought he'd like something different," Ros Hamilton explains.
The Hamiltons lived in Kenya for much of their lives, where David worked as a pilot. Among the flying duties he performed was that of spraying fruit crops. "He particularly loved the challenge of the crop-spraying. There is a perfect little plane carved on his stone. "It wasn't just the stone itself that was so important to us - it was the fact that the project was something to get our teeth into. It helped us over a hump," she says.
When Belfast-based Maria Palmer's husband died suddenly three years ago, she "didn't want anything black to remember him by". A relative sent her a newspaper clipping about the organisation, and she made contact and ordered a commission (artist Gareth Colgan). "It was a whole process that I felt I had control over. I was directing it to my wishes. It was quite a healing process," she explains.
John Palmer had been a librarian. "I wanted a light colour for the stone; I chose a very pale Italian stone. John wouldn't have liked anything too fussy, so in the end we designed something very plain. He loved books, he was always engrossed in them, so there's an outline of a book on the stone."
The commission took a year to complete, and the artist installed it himself. "That part is very final," she concedes. "It's very concrete and somehow chilling when you see the headstone go up. But because I was so satisfied with the piece, it took the hard edge off that experience for me."
Further information from Memorials by Artists, Snape Priory, Saxmundham, Suffolk, 1P17 1SA, England. Tel: 0044-1728-688934. Fax: 0044-1728-688411
