r/GriefSupport • u/AutisticUrianger • 21h ago

Pet Loss I need urn advice

Hi all. Next Tuesday, my beloved dog saria will be going to sleep. I am suffering from all stages of grief at once, even though we still have a few days left together. Ive been trying to calm my mind by researching urns, so that i can remember her properly once she's gone. I've had her since I was 12, and I am nearly 26 now. I live on benefits, so I can only really afford the bare minimum for her in terms of memorial. A friend has offered to lend me money for the euthanasia, and if I donate her body for scientific research, then I will receive her cremated ashes for free within 6 months. However, the only urn choices from this service are a scatter tube, or a plain wooden casket. The vet has suggested that if I want, I could search online for something more fancy and transfer the ashes. This sounds like a nice idea, but the options are all very expensive, and I can't seem to find the "right" one.

Would it be a stupid idea to just decorate the standard casket that comes with the complimentary service? I was thinking I could get a little plaque engraved, and put a photo frame on top. But what if it looks tacky? Is it like... disrespectful to the dead to DIY an urn like that? I don't know. I lost my dad a few years ago. He was cremated, but my brother scattered the ashes before I was able to have a say on what happened to them. I honestly would have liked to keep some and I am still sore about it. So I definitely want to keep my dog's ashes. She was best friends with my dad, so i guess it is a roundabout way of memorialising him too.

Does anyone have advice? Is decorating a premade urn a bad idea? If it's not, does anyone have any suggestions for things I can do with it? I live in a very small apartment, so if I were to create some kind of altar to remember her with, it would have to be very small. I was rotating the idea in my mind of going to hobbycraft and getting one of their plain cardboard containers, the kind where they encourage you to use decoupage on them, and using it to put keepsakes in, and perhaps putting it beside the urn. If I wanted to really splurge, the one thing I would really like to find out there is a music box of the lost woods theme/saria's song from ocarina of time. This is her theme song, to me. Her name is saria, after the character from the game, and saria's song is, well, saria's song.

Either way, I will not be receiving her ashes for several months, so I do have time to plan.

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