Making souvenirs from the relics of the deceased

Thousands of similar items have been sent to Ruo Fan in this way.

Her daily job is to craft these into jewelry or souvenir. For example, she recently received a dried horsehead leaf and acorn wrapped in a note with the letter. The sender wrote, returning from her son’s grave, this leaf and flower clung to her pants. With the feeling that her dead child was holding her back, she sent it to Ruo Fan to turn it into a souvenir.

Two days earlier, a woman sent an old button down, with a letter inside: “My mother is the person closest to me. Since the diagnosis of terminal cancer, we have been through many things together. surgery, chemotherapy, pain relief Now that she’s dying, I’m sending you buttons in her favorite shirt to make a bunny necklace, because rabbits are mom’s zodiac sign I’ll always wear them This necklace is close to my heart so she will always be with me.”

Ruo Fan of Ba Trung City, Sichuan Province, started making handmade jewelry in his hometown many years ago. A few years ago, a texter asked if she could make a crystal containing the hair of her deceased father. Since then, the 35-year-old woman has started making souvenirs from the remains of the deceased or deceased.

Ruo Fan is not afraid of the relics that strangers send to her. According to her, they are ordinary objects, even with profound human meaning.

In the process of communicating with customers, Nhuoc Pham also feels the warmth in her own heart. Sometimes she feels the world is too bitter, but then feels lucky compared to other customers who are going through tragedy out there. She told herself countless times, dying does not mean really leaving, but people still exist in this world in a different form.

“I repeat this to my clients over and over, so that they always feel at ease,” said the mother-of-one.

Relics of the deceased has become a valuable means for family members to remember and store their thoughts.

Some people sent Ruo Fan a few remaining hairs of his late husband’s beard in a razor, some people cut a corner of the blanket of a child who had just died, some families because relatives left too quickly, so they only sent one person. Grave soil from the grave…

Then a pregnant mother chose to make a snowflake necklace and bracelet, and Ruo Fan stuffed a part of the dried placenta into it. This mother only sent a short message: “It snowed heavily on the day the child died”. A girl found a few gray hairs of her father in the car after he passed away: “Dad’s nickname is Iron Lock, I want to make a small lock”, this person texted Ruo Fan in the middle of the night.

In her three years of practice, Ruo Fan remembers the story of a dying mother who wanted to give the twins two bracelets from her hair. She said: “I have been ill for many years, probably will not recover, so I want to use this method to save memories for my children.” Ruo Fan engraved on the back two rings the word “Mom”, and connected them with a heart shape, one half on each side.

There are people who die with gray hair, dull nails or worn teeth. Sometimes when customers send them, Nhuo Pham also bursts into tears when hearing them share that they have never cared about these changes until the death of a loved one. “This is very unfortunate,” she said.

Over the past three years, this woman has crafted more than 2,000 pieces of jewelry or souvenirs from the remains of the soon-to-be and deceased. She also witnessed more than 2,000 stories, all of which contained sadness that was difficult to put into words.

Ruo Fan herself also seeks comfort by keeping celebrate about her mother when she suddenly passed away in 2020. She rummaged around the house for relics, eventually finding a lock of hair stuck under the bed. The daughter made a necklace out of this lock of hair, it’s golden, her mother’s favorite color. The moment of completion, the daughter felt as if something lost had just been found.

“There is so much suffering in this world. If my work can bring someone a little comfort, I will continue to do it”, Ruo Fan always says this when someone asks what his current job is. What is her job?

Vy Trang (According to qq)