After my husband died, it was important to me to help our daughter preserve her memories of him. She was seven and, based on the few memories I have from that age, I knew her memories of him would fade over time if I didn’t help her make them more concrete. I always make sure to talk to her about him often, but I made a few things that I thought would help her to remember him on her own:

Framed photo – I framed a sweet photo of my husband kissing her on the cheek for her to keep in her room. I realized she didn’t have any photos of him in her room so did this soon after he died.

Photo book – Using an online photo service, I made a photo book of their relationship, including mostly photos of just the two of them, so she could remember the times they shared together. I did this within a few months of his death as I remember feeling an urgency to do it quickly or else she might lose her memories of him.

Memory box – I bought her a large decorative box that she picked out, and then she placed in it items that her dad had given her or otherwise reminded her of him. We got the idea from a book called The Memory Box: A Book About Grief, which we had read together.

Binder of stories – On difficult days, like his birthday, Father’s day and the anniversary of his death, a few of my late husband’s old friends email me stories about him from their childhood to share with my daughter. She loves hearing the stories, and I also print them out and save them in a binder, along with newspaper clippings about him that his mom had saved from his childhood.

Buddy bench – In his obituary, I asked for donations to our daughter’s school’s parent teacher association in lieu of flowers because he was a very active volunteer in her classroom and with the PTA. Some of the donations funded a buddy bench for her school playground.

I also saved some of his clothes that I thought she might one day want to wear or repurpose. I had envisioned having a quilt made from t-shirts or a teddy bear from ties (I’ve seen lots of vendors online offering this), but that didn’t happen. Recently she wore one of this ties for a theme day at school, and she’s now in a phase of wearing huge sweatshirts, so I can see her wearing one of his sweatshirts soon.

I also considered making jewelry out of his handwriting or fingerprint and planting a memorial tree or garden, but didn’t for one reason or another. There are so many things I could do to keep his memory alive, but I think it’s probably most important to just keep talking about him. So many friends and family members don’t mention him because, I think, they fear making us sad. What they don’t realize is that it’s so much worse not to mention him at all.