Memory box for friends children

[Claralou199]

One of my best friends died recently. She has left 2 children behind and I am arranging memory boxes for them both with photos and letters from her friends. 1 of her children won't be old enough to remember much and the other will probably most likely remember the bad times (she had suffered from MH problems for years and in the end was a drug addict - her children were not living with her in the end).
I want to tell them everything about her so they know that she was not always like what she was in the end. I am thinking I will write about how we met, school, boyfriends, our holidays, things we did together, some other happy/funny memories, photos. It's a strange one, but I was just making a cup of tea earlier and was thinking how she took her tea and how I should include this too. I will even include her annoying habits that used to drive me insane 😂 But I was just wondering if anyone had any other suggestions of things to include, or if anyone has grown up without a parent and if there were things they wish they knew about them and don't? If it was you what would you want to know? I don't want to miss anything out so thought it would be good to get other opinions. The memory boxes will be given to them when they are older by their gran. I have also asked if some of our other friends would do some letters with their memories of her and photos etc.
Thank you 😊

Lovely idea, though I’d skip sharing info about her boyfriends as kids won’t want to know this. Where is the dad? What about any memories of the mum and her kids, even a story about a nice time in the playground?

One lives with dad who I am friends with. He will be able to talk about my friend and what they did together as a family in the time they were together. The other dad was not involved. I also have lots of memories of things we did together with our children so will include these.

As someone who lost a parent I think this is the kindest and most wonderful gift you can give them. I disagree about the boyfriends, they’ll want to know anything they can. Any story about her.

i’m so sorry about the loss of your friend. She sounds very special, as do you.

What a lovely thing to do Clara

As a previous poster said, I'd include boyfriends etc too. Children like knowing daft stuff like that, paints a picture of a time they didn't know.

You sound like a lovely friend, so sorry for your loss

My young cousin lost her mum (my aunt). We were out with my mum and we made a comment about her mum and her favourite animal and she didn’t know that. I think this is a lovely idea and there’s so much we take for granted about losing someone so young, there’s just so much we don’t take in.

I mentioned something to my cousin about her sitting up by herself and my aunt posting it on Facebook. She asked if she posted much on Facebook and I told her she posted a lot on Facebook about her and let her look through her photos (her profile had some posts about the last few days of her battle with cancer so I just let her look at photos rather than the wall). If there are Facebook posts about the kids could you print those and include them? She loved reading the photos and seeing what her mum had posted about her. For my cousin’s recent birthday I also sent her a cushion of her mum’s favourite animal that she could cuddle when she missed her mum. If you have any of your friend’s old perfume or you know which perfume she wore, you could include some of that.

There may be things that could be added in at different ages though, so maybe not boyfriends straight away but maybe as they get older. We printed all the condolence messages that were printed on Facebook for my aunt. We plan to give these to my cousins when she’s a bit older and she can read through all the things people said about her mum.

You could mention things she particularly liked ; food, music. films, colours, clothes, hobbies sports and pastimes; did she ever have a pet. Describe any special parties or celebrations. Jokes she told.

When they are teens and young adults, they'll be able to look up the films/music/fashions and share her tastes.

Music that she liked. Songs that she used to sing to them and books that she used to read to them. (Treasure) Maps to places that she loved.

An email address for you, so that they can contact you if they ever loose touch, to ask you questions about her. I wouldn't mention past boyfriends at this stage.

There is an app called Record Me Now. It is designed for terminally ill parents to record things for their children for when they are gone. However, it's design is based on interviewing people who were bereaved at a young age and finding out what they had always wished they knew about their parent, or questions they wish they could ask them now, even really mundane things.

I'm not sure how the app works, but there might be some ideas through it?