Monument for an Angel

One of the most difficult things I have ever done has finally been completed today. Apart from arranging services and making other arrangements after Kerrigan passed, designing her memorial has been the hardest thing. How do you create something that reflects your child's life while standing in remembrance of her for hundreds of years to come? How do you relate her life to compete strangers who would happen upon her resting place, yet provide a comforting place for your family to visit and remember her?

Our first step was choosing a company to create her memorial. We chose Bott Monuments out of Rivertone. They had created Grandpa Strom's memorial and did a beautiful job with it. They were great and worked with us every step of the way, whether offering suggestions on shape or stone type and color, to final preparation and accessories.

We started off knowing that we wanted a heart shaped memorial. Beyond that, there wasn't much else we were sure of. When we arrived at Bott's, we found that they were able to adhere broze casts to the stone. Because we had always associated Kerrigan with butterflies, we decided to add some bronze butterflies to the stone. We were even more pleased when we learned that the butterflies could be covered in a colored patina of our choosing. Naturally, we went with her favorite colors: pink and purple.

Here is a picture of the first draft that we looked at:

The poem on the back was from a decorative plaque that Kerrigan's Aunt Jill gave her a few years ago, and we thought it was very fitting to grace her monument. The vases have butterflies going up the front, and are also bronze with a purple patina. We chose not to go with this design because we had wanted to include a box in the memorial into which we could place stuffed animals or little trinkets for holidays or her birthday. Thus brought on the second design:

This picture shows the two stone options that we were considering: a red granite, and Barre Gray, which happens to be the same type of stone that the Joseph Smith memorial is made of. We went with the Barre Gray in order to have the butterflies as the focal point of the stone. For good measure, we had another option created: This is the option that we had chosen, with a few little tweaks to it. Unfortunately, the day that the order was being sent to the quarry, we happened to be re-reading the rules of the Cowley cemetary and found that memorials are not allowed to be taller than three feet. The memorial we had just approved was almost four and a half feet tall! So, with some scrambling around and frantic calls to Bott's, we decided on the second option with the offset heart.

Here's a look at what the butterflies look like:

When was had sent out color swatches, we had chosen a hot pink and a bright purple. When the butterflies arrived from Germany, the purple was PERFECT! The pink...was brick red!! Needless to say, something had to be done! Thankfully, Bott's works with a foundry in Utah that was able to re-patina the butterflies and apply a more acceptable color of pink. Whew!!

We also chose to have Kerrigan's picture mounted on her monument. Her wonderful Uncle DooDoo was able to take one of our favorite pictures of her and tweak it so that it had a more colorful background and better quality overall. Here's the final proof.
We were so thankful that the weather was able to hold out while her memorial was installed. We were all a little weary when it was still raining and overcast this morning, but the sun finally broke through, the temperature warmed up, and the rain stopped! It was a beautiful 65 degrees when we arrived in Cowley. While the men installed Kerrigan's stone, I did some cleaning on my grandpa's headstone and watched while one of the guys from Bott's engraved new dates on my great-grandma's stone.

When all is said and done, we have a beautiful memorial for a beautiful little girl. Thank you so much to everyone who helped us through the creation of this tribute to her memory!