A slow journey - helping ease people’s grief
My beautiful mother died 3 years ago this week. I feel her absence daily. She was the reason I started Vaso and she’s my constant inspiration in a journey that’s been eventful, unpredictable and much, much slower than I anticipated.
I launched Vaso 18 months ago. I was blissfully naive about how hard it would be and how long it would take to find people like me who were looking for something different and beautiful for their loved ones to rest in. I ridiculously thought I’d be inundated with orders as soon as I opened my virtual doors. How wrong I was. And how testing it’s been for a slightly manic person like me, who wants everything to happen RIGHT NOW, to have to be patient as I watch my little business grow.
But slowly, very slowly, grieving people around the world have found us. And often they send heartfelt messages about how grateful they are and what it means for them to have their loved ones finally resting in something beautiful and crafted with love. And that makes my heart sing. That old cliche “it’s the little things that make it all worth it” really is more true than you can imagine.
I love that our Vaso urns bring joy and comfort to people. I love that people find them beautiful to look at and a worthy resting place for the people they hold most dear. I love that, like me, they can now sit with their urn and smile thinking of the wonderful people that have left us. It really does make it all worthwhile.
“Hi Bridgit & the Vaso Team, Just wanted to share..My sister & Brother are so elated that we discovered your website. Like your journey Bridgit we have been searching for a Vessel that felt right but was also a piece of Art that was created with purpose and Love . We have found it , we all felt the same, It's only taken 3 years!”
“Hi there, have been constantly searching for an urn for my husband for a year now, and tonight happened across your stunning ceramics. Your story really spoke to me; so many urns out there that just aren’t ‘him’! Lucky he was a patient man…”
“Hi Bridgit,
My urn arrived today and I had a good cry (and am crying) - it is so beautiful and I'm sure my husband Steve would like it too.”
So many heartfelt moments…
There have also been some genuine surprises.
I assumed everyone who cremated their loved one would also want to put them in an urn to keep on their shelf at home. That’s so not the case.
Despite cremation rising in popularity and now being the preferred form of memorial, many people still prioritise an expensive coffin and ceremony over a beautiful cremation urn that will be a lasting and constant reminder in their daily lives. Or they want to scatter the ashes somewhere significant and don’t see an urn as necessary or important. Sadly, they see it as “an upsell”, much like fries at Mickey Ds.
I totally understand this because a funeral is one of the few things you can actually focus on and control in the fog of grief that consumes you when someone close to you dies. For some people a big funeral equates with the amount of love they had for that person and the need to show the world just how much they cared. And that’s ok too. Honouring loved ones is a cherished tradition and many of us find it an important point of closure.
But for me, I was more interested in what would happen when the quiet came; when all the whānau had gone home; when I had to sit in silence in my home and feel the inevitable emptiness that the loss of my gorgeous, vibrant mother had created. A lot of people don’t think about that until it hits them. And then, like me, that silence can feel interminable and intangible and they reach for something solid to hold onto; something they can look at every day and help them remember their loved ones. And that’s when people come looking for Vaso.
The other surprising discovery was that urns everywhere - right around the world in many, many cultures - are, mostly, horrendously ugly. And all so similar! What’s that about?
I’ve had enquiries from as far afield as South Korea and the Czech Republic to stock our urns because everything in their own countries is mass produced, glitzy or faux ming dynasty. It’s bizarre and so surprising to think people in all corners of the world face the same difficulties finding a beautiful cremation urn.
So, while global chaos reigns and our own fragile economy in Aotearoa is making life challenging for many, I remain hopeful for my little business and confident the world will eventually come to see urns as art and worthy of being the eternal resting place of the eternally stylish.
And in the meantime, I cherish my mother’s resting place and smile every time I see it thinking of the incredible woman who made all this possible.
Choose your own handcrafted cremation urn here
With kindness and love
Bridgit
