Karin Sprague has been carving a niche for herself as a maker of gravestones, but she has also excelled in the art of listening. Remembering a loved one is personal, and Sprague, from her stone-carving studio in the woods of Northern Rhode Island, remembers the anguish.
When her father-in-law died suddenly in 1996, Sprague, who had spent 12 years as a woodcarver, decided to carve his headstone. A newspaper article written about her work led to four commission requests, and Sprague had found a new calling.
By listening to her clients, Sprague has become, in effect, a de facto grief counselor.
Here is a conversation with Sprague. The full interview can be found here.
Karin Sprague never comes out and says it when people ask about her profession.
“I have a small stone carving shop with a small team of carvers and, ‘Oh, so you make sculptures, you make, you know, like Michelangelo?’” she says.
Well, not quite.
” I almost never come right out with, “‘Oh, you know, we make gravestones.’ And then I’ll somehow weave in there, it’s the art of remembering.
Creating gravestones to honor a deceased relative or friend gives comfort.
“We have a place to go and we can read their name aloud,” Sprague says. “Because the love doesn’t end, the stories become even more precious because you don’t have new stories.”
Listening is important
Sprague says the inspiration for creating designs on her monuments comes from sitting down with family members and listening.
“So I’ll ask them, ‘Tell me about your daughter, tell me about your son, tell me about your wife,’” she says. “Very often when I’m sitting with someone, they’re telling me about their spouse, and they’re telling me about how they met, and they’re showing me photos of the travels they’ve done together, I am hearing the most beautiful love story.
“And at some point in the meeting they’ll pause and they’ll say — I’ll hear it again and again — ‘I thought this was gonna be really hard and really difficult, and as much as it is hard and difficult, I’m really enjoying sitting with you and telling you about our daughter, and thank you for listening, and thank you for asking to see her picture.’”
A person’s life is defined by more than a dash
Sprague says that when a person dies, what people want to do is talk about them, or hear a friend recall a story about them. She says that a person’s life is defined
not just by their birth and death dates.
“Even if we’re just gonna carve your mother’s name and her birth year and death year, I’ll try never to just do a dash, that gap in between is your life, so we’ll create an icon of something,” she says. “I like to say and remind each person that our most important tool is our heart.”
Sprague does not know what the afterlife brings. “I don’t know, I’ll meet you there,” she says.
But the present life — where she carves memories on gravestones for families putting their trust in her — is very powerful.
“I think to myself, how did I get to do this?” she says. “This is it, this is the work I’ve always — I didn’t ever imagine it, just one day at a time — it evolved, and I kept saying, ‘Yes.’”
Sprague said she has not designed her own stone yet.
“I don’t know what that’s gonna be, but I’ve always thought the epitaph on there might be, ‘She was a passionate woman,’” she says,
