Via Andrew Sullivan: Using Science, it’s possible to create artificial diamonds from carbon. And we humans are, as you know, carbon-based life forms. Now a company called LifeGem is offering custom jewelry made from the cremated remains of your One True Love, or any other dead person you want a wearable trophy of. (They also have an option where they extract the carbon from locks of hair, so the person doesn’t even have to be dead…just desirable).
IMHO this is not as cool as the pet mummification service, but it’s close.
The diamond scheme has been around for a while, and was used memorably (it would be memorable anyway if I could actually remember it) in a story or a novel by some writer somewhere, maybe a student of mine? Where a man is preoccupied with the jewel made from his wife’s ashes, out of which she sometimes speaks to him.