SYDNEY, Australia -
Warren Blackwell held onto the ashes of his beloved canine companion Gypsy for
eight years, never able to find the right place or occasion to celebrate her
life.
"I've
never been able to part with them, I've never been able to come up with
anything that was suitable to do with them that would make me happy," he
said.
The smart,
loyal Staffordshire bull terrier was hit by a car when she was just four years
old, shortly after Blackwell moved to the city from the countryside, a
horrifying moment he said compounded his need to give her a proper farewell.
"I
was giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and I tried to get her to the
hospital, to the vet, but she didn't make it," he said.
"I
didn't want something that was all about her death. I wanted it to be about her
life." So Blackwell didn't think twice when friend Craig Hull, a trained circus performer and pyrotechnician asked whether he'd like to send Gypsy off in style, as the first customer of his fireworks funeral firm, Ashes to Ashes.
"When
Craig suggested this I said 'mate I want to be first cab off the rank',"
he told AFP, watching the sun set over the glittering waters of Sydney Harbour
-- soon to be Gypsy's final resting place.
"I've
seen the shell, and I've seen her go into the tube over there, she's over there
waiting. I know she's going to make a loud bang, that much I'm sure of."
The Ashes
to Ashes story began almost three years ago when Hull's two beloved dogs,
German shepherd-Akita cross Zeus and Gyprock, a white labrador-cattle dog
cross, died, leaving a "big hole" in the performer's life.
He'd
already scattered the ashes of a friend during an aerial routine at an opening
ceremony for one of the Olympics -- he won't say which -- and felt his dogs
deserved something even more spectacular.
Source: The Sun Daily...More...
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