Keaau artist turns mother’s ashes into stones for Mother’s Day remembrance

Dandylyon Darr keeps her mother close in a way that is both tangible and unusual: about 40 small stones, some with greenish hues, resting in a wooden box in her Keaau home.

The stones hold the remains of Kat Shannon, who died of endometrial cancer in August 2022. Darr said she and her brother wanted the funeral kept simple because their mother, whom she described as an old hippie, did not want much done. When a funeral director mentioned solidified remains, they chose the option quickly.

The company behind the process, Parting Stone, says it turns 100% of cremated remains into an average of 40 to 80-plus smooth stones, a complete alternative to an urn. The remains are processed in New Mexico, where impurities are removed before the material is formed and kiln-fired into finished stones. Parting Stone says each set is tracked through a secure barcode-based chain-of-custody system, and that its patented process was validated by Los Alamos National Laboratory.

For Darr, the result was immediately personal. She said receiving the package at home in Keaau felt almost spiritual, especially because a rainbow appeared as it arrived. Most of the stones stay in the wooden box, but she carries one when she travels or keeps one on her nightstand, a daily reminder that her mother’s memory does not have to stay sealed away in an urn.

The choice also fits a broader shift in funeral planning. The National Funeral Directors Association projected the U.S. cremation rate at 61.9% for 2024, while burial was projected at 33.2%, showing how quickly families are moving toward cremation and, with it, new memorial options. Parting Stone, founded in 2019 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, by Justin Crowe, says the stones can be shared among family members, carried in a pocket or displayed as part of remembrance.

On the Big Island, that kind of memorial carries a local resonance. In a place where artists often build identity around deeply personal work, Darr’s story shows how grief can become part of a small-business landscape as well as a family ritual. The stones are not just a keepsake from a mother lost in 2022; they are a reminder that remembrance is becoming more tactile, more individualized and, for some families, more at home in everyday life.