As soon as we decided on celebration of life dates, I could not get it out of my head that I needed to come up with some kind of small token to give people in my sister’s honor. Honestly, I needed somewhere to pour my energy, to channel the excitement I would have put into wedding favors or future birthdays. Surely there wasn’t a search term for this macabre party favor though, right?
Wrong. It’s the internet, so there’s anything you can think of.
I spent weeks scouring the internet for ideas. There’s a lot of things that, frankly, I think are tacky or cumbersome or just not right. I didn’t quite understand my goal at the outset, but looking back now, I see that I wanted a piece of permanence for her. (A feeling, I suspect, that is a cousin of why I am going to get a tattoo in remembrance of her.)
My desired attributes list looked something like:
Not ugly
Not bulky
Not likely to get purged or tossed
Not so vague it wouldn’t be clearly about my sister
Not lame
Not single-use or consumable (though I will also be giving people red wildflower seeds as well, so I didn’t not strictly follow this one)
Ultimately, my idea came not from a list article about funeral favors (what a terrible alliteration) but from thinking about my sister. Since we were kids, she collected die cast lapel pins at air shows and some other vacation sites. I have a fair number, too, but she carried on the family tradition with our parents for the ten years I’ve been away. As soon as the idea of lapel pins struck, I was swept up in it.
How would I capture my sister in a pin?
Well, as it turns out, it would take not one but two to make me feel like I had done an adequate job. In three days’ time, I will be giving these to people attending the celebration of life in the town where she lived. I hope they like them.
One captures her aesthetic, music preferences, favorite color, and just a general vibe. She loved Halloween and metal and concerts and the color red, despite wearing a lot of black and white.
The other is her actual silhouette from a photo she took at the coast, set against an ocean backdrop at sunset. The colors in the sunset are directly pulled from a sampling of her many coastal sunset photos taken over the years. She absolutely loved the sea.
I hope these pins will go on people’s work shirts, hats, or bags as they go about their days.
I hope these pins will attend concerts and county fairs and summer outings.
I hope these pins will adorn bulletin boards or knick knack displays in the intimate privacy of loved ones’ houses.
I hope that these pins will, every now and then, evoke my sister’s memory.
And I hope one day, when these pins remain but the people who owned them do not, someone will find them, wherever they are, and think, “Hey, a cool pin,” as they affix it and carry it onward.
Unmoored Sister 