Rising from the Ashes: The Alexandra Lachini Story
(Photos courtesy of huggableurns.com)
It was not the first thing the ashes of her dead father told her to do -- the first thing they said was, "Get me out of the closet" -- but during the extended conversation Alexandra Lachini says she had with her father's cremains, he at one point asked her to throw him off the balcony.
So she did.
Her father's cremated remains were in a plastic pouch at the time, which she hurled off the balcony to the pavement below. It was all his idea, she says -- he wanted to make sure it was a sturdy bag -- and she was carrying out his post-mortem wishes.
This was about midway into the creation of what would become Hold Me Urns Inc., makers of Huggable Urns, the company Lachini started on the advice of her dead father that makes pillows and stuffed animals in which the cremated remains of humans and pets can be stored and cuddled for eternity.
Lachini, as we reported yesterday, made a huggable urn for Oprah after her dog Gracie died last year -- and is still trying to get the media mogul and talk show host to accept it. Her efforts intensified after she read of the more recent death of Oprah's dog Sophie.
Lachini started the project after her father passed away in 1998. She spent the last two months of his life by his bedside. After he died, Lachini said, her father started to communicate with her. The first thing he said was, "Get me out of the closet."
On her next visit to her mother's house, Lachini asked the whereabouts of her father's ashes -- given to the family after his death in an "ugly plastic container." Sure enough, they were in a basement closet.
"He didn't like that," Lachini said. "He told me to take the ashes home with me, and for the following year, he taught me all about the energy of the ashes. He had me put my hands in the ashes. He had me take out eight little pieces of bone that didn't get fully crushed and carry them with me. Then he had me put the ashes in my purse. 'Carry me around,' he said, 'take me with you.'"
She thought she was helping him, but she was also helping herself. "It really helps with the initial shock. In that situation, you need something to hold. It's like when your boyfriend breaks up with you and you go and grab his old shirt and wear it around. Babies grab their little blanket. It's a natural instinct for us."
Now, Lachini is selling the concept on the Internet -- stuffed animals with zip-up backs and, inside, sealable plastic pouches inside in which you can store the ashes of a husband, wife, father, mother, cat or dog.
She eventually returned her fathers remains to her mother (at his request), and they are now kept sometimes in a stuffed bear, sometimes in a specially made pillow. Her mother, she said, "slept with them, and held them," and her Dad told her, 'See how your mom is healing?'"
Lachini, 54, who lives in Redding, Calif., says most of her orders have been from people who want to keep their pets' remains in a cuddly toy. She's filling one now for a woman in Japan, who wants two stuffed animals in which to hold her deceased husband's ashes -- one for each of her daughters.
She has high hopes for the company, though she knows some view the idea as creepy. It's nothing of the sort, she says. In fact, it's almost "normal" -- a way to ensure that the person who, in life, you just wanted to hug to death can also be hugged afterwards.
