Footprints in the Sand Urns

The poem lays a whole life out as one long walk along a beach, where the easy miles and the difficult stretches are all part of the same path. It is a way of looking back at the whole of a journey, acknowledging that the years no one speaks of were just as much a part of the trek as the good ones. For those who lived with the conviction that they were never truly alone, even when the path grew steep, the whole poem is written out across the face of the urn.

In the poem, the walker notices a single trail of prints through the hardest stretches and asks why they were left alone then. In those stretches, it appears the walker was walking by themselves, yet the narrative reveals a different truth: those were the times they were being carried. You might see your loved one in that single trail of prints, remembering how they moved through their hardest seasons.

This design is available across different materials to suit the way you wish to remember them. Our aluminum urns come in a range of painted colors or in a hand-applied enamel finish accented with hand-detailed silver bands, both featuring a threaded screw-top lid and a felt base. For those who prefer wood, our Prestige walnut line is made in the USA and features the poem printed in full color on solid walnut with a bottom-loading base.

To accommodate how a family wishes to keep a loved one close, we offer the collection in two sizes. A full-size urn is crafted to hold the entire remains of an adult, while a sharing urn is designed to hold a portion of the remains, allowing more than one person to keep a part of their presence with them.

To make the piece truly theirs, you may choose to have their name and dates engraved directly into the surface. The name and dates are cut in two-tone lettering, beside the poem.

If the person you remember was someone who did not get through the hard years alone, and who looked back over the whole of it as one road, then this design will read as theirs. Anyone who walked part of that road with them will recognize the whole of it in the poem, including the seasons that were traveled with company.

You might picture them walking the length of a beach.

Our guide to selecting the right size urn