A grieving daughter ensured The Force will always be with her late father – by using her welding talents to create a Death Star urn for his ashes.
Jade Anderson’s dad Chris, from Dundee, was just 51 when he died from cancer on April 11.
The 28-year-old says her “hero” – a Star Wars fan – often asked her to make him something but she never got the chance.
“So I thought to myself, I’ll make his final resting place,” she said.
Welder Jade, who works at Tayport firm Foodmek, revealed it was an emotional process for both her and her family.
“When I showed it to mum she was holding back the tears,” she said.
“For me, it’s the fact that dad always wanted me to make him something.
“He always wanted me to make him something and I never got the chance to.
“I’ve now made him one final gift from me to him.”
Fans of Star Wars and Star Trek
Jade said Christopher was a huge sci-fi fan and brought his children up on Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Star Wars.
She originally intended to buy an urn for her dad’s remains and had been looking online for something unique.
She said: “I came across a picture of the Death Star urn and I priced them up then I thought to myself, dad would actually like me to make that.”
Jade once made her mother a rose sculpture for Mother’s Day, with Christopher then asking her to create something for him.
She said: “I never got the chance to. So I thought to myself, I’ll make him his final resting place.”
Jade approached her boss, asking for time on the shop floor to work on the urn.
She said: “He didn’t even think about it, just straight away he said to go and speak to the purchasing team and see what you need to get and we’ll cover the costs for the material.
“I was just super-excited ever since then to try to make him something as good as possible.
“I couldn’t thank my work enough for letting them make something so personal to me.”
She added that her entire team was incredibly supportive, saying: “I spoke to the boys at work and showed them a few pictures of different ideas and asked how possible would it be to make this, am I missing anything out.
“They gave me loads of ideas.”
‘I just kept pushing through’
The process was not an easy one and Jade says she felt like giving up on a number of occasions.
“Once I got the materials together and I got the process of how I was going to do it, I found it quite difficult,” Jade recalled.
“I had so many meltdowns making it. I was too concerned with how it would look.
“Like, I’m not going to make a good job of this and absolutely doubting myself.
“One of my colleagues, Michael Jellye, he pushed me through it and said it doesn’t matter if it looks like a four-year-old made it, he still would have loved it.
“So I just kept pushing through. I was so stressed out, I was just – I kept wondering if it was going to be good enough.
“It wasn’t really coming together to start with but when I started getting it all together, and getting the finishing touches on it, I realised this was brilliant.
“What Michael said to me is it doesn’t matter what it looks like, your dad would have loved it regardless.
“That comment alone just made me go on. I wanted to quit so many times but the boys pushed me through it.”
Jade said her dad would “definitely have been proud” of her work.
She said: “I’ve not been able to settle since dad died. I’ve been all over the place.
“But since I put him inside the urn, I feel like a big weight has been lifted off.
“I’ve done something he wanted me to do. He definitely would have loved it.”
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