Italian dad turns son`s remains into diamond

New York: In a first-of-its-kind case in Italy, a grieving father had his dead son eternally preserved by getting the 20-year-old`s ashes transformed into a diamond. The father had his son`s body exhumed and cremated before sending the ashes off to Switzerland so they could be compressed into the gemstone. The young son, killed in a car crash earlier this year, had already been buried in his hometown of Treviso, in northern Italy, when his 55-year-old dad came up with the idea. Remembrance diamonds` are created by filtering and refining the carbon found in cremated ashes, then secured in a chamber, where intense pressure and a temperature similar to that of a volcano are applied, creating a synthetic diamond, `The Local` reported. The process can cost as much as USD 18,000, according to `New York Daily News`. The father recently received the synthetic `Remembrance Diamond` after an eight-month weight.