The one thing I was sure I wanted to keep after my dad died was his watch. It had stopped working years before and it was worth basically nothing but I didn’t want to let it go.
I ended up wearing it for months. Nobody could have told me it was silly because to me it wasn’t a watch anymore. It was a way of keeping him on my wrist and with me a little longer.
Thats what a memorial keepsake really is. You aren’t purchase a regular item or a project to work on but it’s a small thing you can keep hold of for when the person themselves is gone.
Some people want jewelry they can wear every day. Others want something on a shelf, or a box they can open when they feel ready.
So if you’re looking for ideas, either for yourself or to give to someone who is grieving, this guide goes through dozens of them. Some you can buy, others you can make with your own hands. All of them work as a way to keep your loved one with you.
What Makes a Good Memorial Keepsake
A keepsake works when it feels like the person and not like some sort of product. That sounds obvious but it’s easy to forget when you’re scrolling through hundreds of options.
Grief researchers have a name for the reason these objects help. It’s called continuing bonds and it’s the idea that healthy grieving isn’t about letting go and moving on but about carrying the relationship forward in a changed form.
The bond lives in or is represented by the keepsake. It’s why a worn flannel shirt or a coffee mug can comfort us more than something expensive and new.
So before you choose it helps to think about a few simple questions:
- Do you want something you can wear and keep close or something to show at home?
- Do you have any of their belongings, ashes, handwriting or photos you’d want to build the keepsake around?
- Is this for you or a gift for another family member who is grieving too?
- Do you want something finished and ready or a project you can do yourself into?
Choosing one of those will help you to get the right keepsake. One that brings you a bit of comfort when you look at it or hold it. With that in mind, here are the ideas.
Memorial Jewelry Keepsakes
Jewelry is the most popular type of keepsake for one simple reason. You can carry it with you.
A necklace under your shirt or a ring on your finger keeps your loved one close during the normal parts of the day when grief can catch you off guard in the checkout line or halfway through a meeting.
Fingerprint and Thumbprint Jewelry
Fingerprint jewelry captures the print of your loved one and casts or engraves it into metal, usually a pendant but also rings, cufflinks, keychains and bracelets. Running your thumb over the ridges of their print reminds you of them. It’s one of the few keepsakes you can feel as much as see.
Funeral homes have offered these for decades and one of the best known makers, Thumbies, has been producing print keepsakes since 1998. If your loved one has already passed and no print was taken, don’t panic. Many families use a print taken from an existing document and some jewelers can work from a good photograph of a print.
Custom Teardrop Fingerprint Necklace With Angel Wing Sterling Silver
Cremation Jewelry That Holds Ashes
Cremation jewelry, sometimes called urn jewelry, has a tiny sealed chamber inside. You put a small pinch of ashes in, secure the seal and wear it.
These come as pendants, rings, bracelets and even small keychains for people who don’t usually wear jewelry.
If the idea of a hidden compartment doesn’t feel right there’s a beautiful alternative. Glass artisans fuse a tiny amount of ashes directly into molten glass, swirling it through with color so the finished pendant or bead shimmers. No two are ever the same, which feels fitting.
Not everyone is comfortable using ashes in a keepsake and that’s fine. Lots of gorgeous memorial jewelry uses no remains at all.
Cremation Urn Necklace for Ashes
Photo, Handwriting and Birthstone Pieces
If ashes and prints aren’t your thing these three are lovely options that use no remains:
- Photo necklaces laser engrave a favorite photo onto the pendant surface so you carry their face rather than an object.
- Handwriting jewelry takes a real note, signature or the phrase they always signed off with and engraves it in their own hand. Seeing “love always, Mom” in her actual writing makes me emotional just thinking about it.
- Birthstone pieces mark their birth month with a stone, which works beautifully as matching pieces for several family members.
- Lock of hair keepsakes preserve a small strand inside a glass locket or set into a pendant.
Fingerprint pieces in particular make meaningful gifts for a whole family. A pendant bearing a parent’s thumbprint, given to each of the grown children, connects everyone to the same person.
Recipients often say it becomes the most treasured thing they own. If you’re considering this as a gift our guide to unique sympathy gift ideas has more along these lines.
ArtPix 3D Crystal Photo, Christmas Personalized Necklace Gift
Keepsakes Made From Their Clothing
There is something about clothing. A sweater still keeps the shape of the person, sometimes even their smell, and deciding what to do with a wardrobe full of it is one of the hardest things to do during grief. Turning some of those clothes into a keepsake means you don’t have to choose between keeping everything and letting it all go.
Memory Quilts and Pillows
A memory quilt sewn from a loved one’s shirts, dresses or ties is one of the most cherished keepsakes there is. You can wrap yourself in it and in a real sense wrap yourself in them.
Memory pillows do the same on a smaller scale and are a gentler starting point if a full quilt feels like too much fabric and too much feeling at once.
A woman I read about who makes these for grieving families said the moment people pick up the finished quilt is usually happy tears because they’re seeing a beloved shirt brought back to life. So much better than in a box in the attic.
Memory Bears and Keepsakes for Children
For children who’ve lost a parent or grandparent a memory bear is a great idea. A seamstress turns a favorite shirt or robe into a soft teddy the child can hold at night, sometimes with a little pocket stitched inside for a note.
A small person who is too young for words about death can still understand a bear made from grandpa’s flannel.
If you’re helping a child through a loss you might also find our thoughts on what to say to someone who lost a parent useful though be aware that page is written with adults in mind.
Photo Keepsakes
Photos are the keepsake almost everyone already has, sitting in phones and shoeboxes. The idea is to bring the best of them out where you can see them.
- Framed photo collages get a handful of favorites into one piece for a wall or mantel.
- Photo blankets and cushions print a picture onto something soft you can actually curl up with.
- Commissioned portraits, painted or drawn from a photograph feel like more than a snapshot and become an heirloom.
- Slideshow or digital frames cycle through dozens of images, which is lovely for a family home where everyone has their own favorite memory.
Don’t only choose the posed photos where everyone is smiling. The ones that make people say “that’s so him” are usually the candid shots, caught mid laugh or asleep in a chair. Those are the ones worth framing.
Memory Boxes and Shadow Boxes
A memory box is what it sounds like – a beautiful box that holds the small things too precious to throw away and too painful to leave in a drawer.
It could be something like a pair of reading glasses, a last birthday card, a concert ticket, a lock of hair etc. You don’t have to look inside often. Just knowing it’s there, safely in one place, is comforting.
A shadow box takes the same idea and puts it on display behind glass. These work especially well for a life with a clear thread running through it, a veteran’s medals and folded flag, a musician’s guitar picks and set lists, a gardener’s seed packets and gloves. You’re telling the story of a person in objects.
Wooden Keepsake Box, Large Acacia Storage Memory Box with a Hinged Lid
Handwriting and Voice Keepsakes
Some of the most moving keepsakes capture not the person’s things but the traces they left behind, the way they wrote and the sound of their voice.
Handwriting Keepsakes
We touched on handwriting jewelry above but a signature or a scribbled note can go so much further. A recipe card in your grandmother’s writing, framed and hung in the kitchen, is the perfect way to remember her.
A short note or the closing line of a letter can be enlarged into wall art. Even a signature engraved on a bracelet keeps their exact hand with you.
Voice and Sound Keepsakes
If you’re lucky enough to have a voicemail you never deleted or a home video with them talking that recording is priceless. Some companies turn a snippet of a recorded voice into a soundwave then print or engrave the wave pattern onto a bracelet, a print or a pendant.
You carry the shape of them saying “I love you” or simply “call me back”. I know a few people who’ve done this and none of them regret it.
Cremation Keepsakes Beyond Jewelry
The majority of families in the US now choose cremation which has opened up a whole world of keepsakes that goes further than the traditional urn on the mantel. If you’re deciding what to do with ashes you have a lot more options than you might think.
- Keepsake urns are small urns designed to hold a portion of ashes so several family members can each keep a little.
- Ashes into glass art, as mentioned earlier, from small pendants up to hand blown paperweights and sculptures.
- Memorial diamonds and stones are grown in a lab from the carbon in ashes for a permanent keepsake.
- Living memorials mix a small amount of ashes with soil to grow a tree or plant, which we’ll come to next.
If a ceremony is part of your plans our guide on what to say when scattering ashes has readings and words.
Living and Outdoor Memorials
You can’t fit every keepsake in a box or on a chain. Some grow. A living memorial gives grief somewhere to go outdoors and it changes with the seasons the way we do.
- Memorial trees planted in a garden or a park keep growing for decades. Watching it come into leaf each spring is a wonderful way to celebrate an anniversary.
- Memorial gardens can be as simple as a corner planted with their favorite flowers or a bed built around a bench.
- Engraved garden stones put a name and a few words among the plants.
- Memorial benches give family and friends a place to sit and be with them, be it in your own garden or somewhere they loved.
There is also the memorial that lives on in other people. A donation in their name to a cause they cared about keeps their values working in the world.
If you’d like help with the wording we have a whole guide on what to write when making a donation in memory of someone.
Keepsakes for Birthdays, Holidays and Anniversaries
The hard days have a way of arriving even if you’re ready or not. A keepsake made specifically for those days can help you get through it.
Memorial ornaments are the classic here, a bauble engraved with a name or photo that comes out every December and gives the person a place at Christmas. Some families light a special candle at the table, or set an empty chair, or raise a glass. Others buy a small gift they know their loved one would have loved and donate it to a child in need.
If the first round of these days is coming up you might want to read what to say when it’s someone’s first holiday without a loved one, and for the birthdays, happy birthday in heaven messages. A death anniversary is tough too and our death anniversary quotes can help you find the words when a keepsake alone isn’t enough.
DIY Memorial Keepsake Ideas
Buying a keepsake is great but making one yourself does something a bit different. The hours you spend on it become hours spent with the person. A lot of people find the doing is as healing as the finished thing.
A few DIY ideas that don’t require much beyond patience and love:
- Sew a simple pillow or a small patchwork from their clothes, no quilting expertise required.
- Fill a recipe box or a scrapbook, one page at a time, with photos and things you want to remember.
- Pour and label a candle, adding their name or a date to the glass.
- Press flowers from the funeral into a frame.
- Turn a favorite photo into a small framed print for each family member.
But be warned – making a memorial keepsake can bring grief up fast and unexpectedly. Work in short sessions. Keep tissues and a glass of water nearby. Play music they loved or work in silence if that’s better. And if it helps, invite someone to sit and make it with you rather than doing it alone.
What to Have Engraved on a Keepsake
Once you’ve chosen the keepsake the hardest part is often the words that go on it. You want something that fits the small space and the size of the feeling, which is not easy.
A few short lines that work well on jewelry, plaques and stones:
Forever in my heart
Always with me
Loved beyond words
Until we meet again
Your wings were ready, my heart was not
Held in my heart, always
******************
If you want more to choose from these three guides are built for exactly this:
- In loving memory quotes for short, warm lines that suit almost any keepsake.
- Quotes for headstone epitaphs and our epitaph examples for something with a little more weight.
- Memorial plaque wording examples for benches, garden stones and plaques.
A Keepsake Is Not a Goodbye
I still have my dad’s watch. It still doesn’t work but somewhere along the way it stopped being about the loss and became more about my love for him, which I think is the point of every keepsake in this guide.
Whatever you choose you’re not trying to sum up a person or tie a bow on your grief. You’re just giving your love for them somewhere to go.
If you’re choosing something for someone else who is grieving our guides to sympathy gift ideas and sympathy gift etiquette will help you get it right. And for a pet who was every bit as much family we have ideas over on pet loss gift ideas.
Memorial Keepsake Questions
What is a good keepsake for someone who passed away?
A good keepsake is one that feels like the person rather than a generic product. Popular choices include fingerprint or photo jewelry, a memory quilt sewn from their clothing, a shadow box of meaningful objects and a memorial tree or garden. The best one depends on whether you want something to wear, something to display or something to make yourself.
What can I do with a loved one’s ashes besides an urn?
Plenty. A small portion of ashes can be sealed inside cremation jewelry, fused into hand-blown glass, grown into a memorial diamond or mixed with soil to plant a tree. Keepsake urns also let several family members each keep a little. If a ceremony is part of it, our guide on what to say when scattering ashes covers the words.
What is a good memorial keepsake for a child who is grieving?
A memory bear made from a parent or grandparent’s clothing is one of the most comforting keepsakes for a grieving child, since it’s soft, huggable and made from something the person actually wore. A framed photo for their bedroom or a small piece of simple jewelry can also help a child feel their loved one is still close.
How do I choose what to engrave on a memorial keepsake?
Keep it short and true to your feeling. Simple lines like “forever in my heart” or “always with me” suit almost any keepsake, or you can use their name and dates, a nickname or a phrase they always said. For more ideas, browse in loving memory quotes, epitaph examples and memorial plaque wording examples.
