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Another idea — the furniture path

The Memorial Cabinet

The Memorial Cabinet, twenty-five lit drawers

The custom-furniture alternative (D256). The ready-today recommendation is Umm — The Memorial Case; this page stays for a family that wants furniture. Twenty-five drawers, one per person. Each one holds the small three-dimensional things a page cannot — the laser-etched crystal at the front, lit from underneath; the DNA capsule standing behind it; the envelopes; and, if there are ashes, a token urn.

What it costs

⚠ The cabinet is made to order and is not priced here yet — it is furniture, so the cost depends on the wood and the drawer count.

Also recommended

Ordered direct from other people, at their prices. No link here earns us a commission.

  • The Memorial Cabinet not priced yet Another idea, kept (D256) — the custom-furniture path: twenty-five drawers, one per person, bought once by a family (D4).

Also recommended not priced yet

⚠ 1 of 1 items not priced yet · ordered from third parties, prices theirs and subject to change

Bought once by a family, not once per person

Every other part of this is one per person: a book you fill in, a kit you use, a volume you keep. The cabinet is the one thing a family buys together — about four of them for a hundred people — and it is the only part that outlives everything in it. That is why it is furniture-grade wood rather than something we ship flat.

What one drawer holds

One drawer pulled out: the lit crystal at the front behind glass, the DNA capsule and envelopes behind it, an engraved brass name plate on the drawer face

A drawer, open. The interior is 3.0 × 4.25 × 7.0 inches in two zones, and the whole design is in that split.

The front — lit, behind glass

  • The laser-etched crystal. Their face, cut into glass. It stands on a frosted window in the drawer floor with an LED beneath, so the portrait lights from the inside when you walk into the room.
  • An engraved brass name plate on the drawer face — name and birth year, nothing else.

The back — dark, because light destroys what is in it

  • The DNA capsule, standing upright. At 1.5 × 4.0in it is what set the drawer's height.
  • The envelopes — hair with the bulb attached, the buccal swab, the blood-and-saliva card. Paper, never plastic: plastic traps moisture, moisture grows mold, mold destroys DNA.
  • The putty thumbprint, and the vials.
  • A token urn, if there are ashes. Solid unplated brass or 316 stainless — never aluminum.
  • The irreplaceable text, printed — their voice-and-likeness wishes and their ash instruction. On paper, because paper needs no reader.
  • The Drawer Card. The index: who is in here, what is in here, and where the originals are.

The plates do not go in the drawer. An 8.5 × 11 page cannot fit, and folding it enough to fit creases it to ruin. They live in their box while you fill them in, and in the Volume afterwards.

⚠ Nothing valuable goes in a drawer. Ever. No rings, no jewelry, no gold, no cash. This is a cabinet of irreplaceable things standing in a house — the moment it is also a cabinet of sellable things, it becomes something worth stealing.