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In my first article I spoke a little about where the desire to give gifts likely
came from and why we seek personalized gifts, desire to be the recipients of them
and why we are often both embarrased and angry when we do not receive them. In this
article I want to speak about another high-emotion topic, Memorial gifts.
Memorial gifts are those given to remember a loved one (whether human or animal) and as
such they are given at times when human beings are at their most vulnerable and needy.
In the giving of memorial gifts we must be even more careful than in other personalized
gifts. You will remember that we spoke about the reasons we might give a personalized
gifts to someone, when we give a memorial gift we need to forget all of those reasons
(except perhaps the one of price.)
The reason I say this is because when we give a gift at such a time we seek to comfort
the one who has lost a loved one and to remember the one who has passed.
So what should I give?
A good memorial gift is one which helps us to remember how special the one who has passed was
to us, their personality, perhaps the sound of their voice, the way the looked in their prime,
in fact, anything which helps us to remain in touch with the loved one as they were, alive and vital.
Here are some suggestions for such gifts:
First and foremost, a picture. This is a perfect gift but needs to be carefully chosen.
A suggestion is to involve other friends in choosing the picture to be given.
You should also present the picture in a frame, that way the bereaved does not have to
worry about finding a framer and paying for it.
A great suggestion is to have the photograph turned into a painting not only is the medium
more intimate but paintings become family heirlooms thus the gift becomes a part of the
family's history.
PaintYourLife.com offers just such a service; they can take a photograph or a series of them
and have their artists turn it into a wonderful oil or watercolor, a charcoal or pencil
sketch or even a mosaic! Their prices are reasonable and the finished product simply superb.
I recommend taking a look at their site.
Another gift may be to have some of the loved one's ashes (if they were cremated!) placed inside
a decorative urn of some kind and this is presented to the bereaved. Urns can come in wood,
crystal, metal and stone and can be from pendant size up to 11 or 12 inches tall. Simply
because these items do contain a part of the loved one extreme care should be taken in the
giving of them.
A third possibility might be the starting of a web page memorialising the person. This needs to be
done as completely as possible before passing it over to the bereaved, it should not contain
personal details of those left living unless the bereaved have agreed to their inclusion and
DON'T set it up so that the recipient must pay for its upkeep, either make it on a free
hosting site or pay for it's upkeep yourself.
In summation then, Memorial gifts can help a bereaved person move through their grief, they
can remind them of what their loved one looked like when they were alive, they can be a aid
to their remembrance of the loved one's face, personality, the things they cared about.
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