Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-25192437-20150307225810/@comment-1458758-20150310190518

Seelentau wrote: But Gaara's mother was alive after Gaara was born and yet he had the rings. When was it ever stated the person needed to be dead? Minato and Kushina were impaled and already dying, they just used the last of their chakra, similarly so with Itachi. At no point were these presented as techniques that cost the users their lives, that was more an unfortunate side effect of the circumstances. Besides, we know Karura died soon after, so even if we assume that to do this for some reason does cost the user like that, it could just be that Karura was still kicking long enough to see Gaara.