Easy Memory Lantern to Remember Your Loved One
Holidays are hard when you have lost a loved one. And there are so many of them! Almost each month seems to have a religious holiday, national holiday, or a special holiday that celebrates the family. Days like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Grandparent’s Day can be stressful for those who have lost that loved one.
For children, these days can become even more challenging if their memories of the lost person are beginning to fade. Creating a memory lantern to remember your loved one is a great activity to spark conversations and stories. And at the end of the day you will have a warm light to glow in the darkness of that difficult day.
Scroll down for the directions!
My Story
When I was a young girl, I remember making Mother’s Day gifts in school. I remember cutting and gluing and adding glitter to the homemade card that I would proudly present to my mother. I remember feeling lucky that Father’s Day happened after the school year ended because my father died when I was very young. I hated Father’s Day. Each year on Father’s Day, I would wake up and count the moments until the day was over, struggling with my feelings of grief on a day when others were celebrating with cook outs, picnics, or just spending time with their own, very much alive, fathers.
On these holidays, you may find yourself overcome with memories of your loved one. You may have strong feelings and memories about their final moments and be surrounded by so many different emotions. As an adult, you probably have a memory bank filled with different life experiences that include your person, but this is not the case for children. Children may have a small bank of memories that fade over time. I depended upon others to share their memories of my father as a way to know more about him. The memories that other people had about my father became much of my own memory bank.
My Daughters’ Story
Now, I am raising my daughters after they have lost THEIR father. Recently, my youngest daughters started saying, “I don’t remember daddy very much anymore!” Their memories were beginning to fade after only a few years without him. These feelings were upsetting. My girls were afraid of forgetting their father. Even though we spent time talking about him, they struggled to remember certain things.
I make it a practice to share stories about him and I bring him up in our conversations to keep their bank of memories as full as possible. They can’t easily picture his sly little glances, or hear his laugh, they cannot remember the sound of his voice. They have limited memories about how silly he could be. This reality breaks their hearts, and mine.
With Father’s Day quickly approaching, I decided that I needed to find a way to share memories in a way that would last. Like all good women, I turned to Pinterest for inspiration and as always, it delivered! I learned about memory lanterns and immediately knew that we would be making these on the holiday. It was simple! It used materials I had around the house! It was cheap! Most importantly, it was a powerful activity.
This year, Father’s Day fell during the coronavirus “Safer at Home” orders. We had stayed in our home for two months, only leaving to put the garbage out to the curb or to bring the delivered groceries into the house. Even though I would not be able to run to the store, I knew that I had the basic materials for this activity: clear glass jars, tissue paper, glue and markers.
We set aside the online schoolwork for the morning and turned our kitchen table into an arts and crafts retreat! Each of us sat at the table ripping small pieces of colorful tissue paper and we shared our memories of my husband, their father. As we shared memories or funny stories, we jotted down little words and phrases onto each piece of paper an then carefully glued them to the jar. After about an hour of recounting stories – like the time he “accidentally steered the canoe towards the nude beach with our oldest daughter in the front,” or how he would come home from the store with candy that he said had, “just jumped into the cart!” the jars were completely covered in memories! Next, we placed each precious tissue paper memory onto the glass jar and painted glue over them. After a few hours, they were dry.
That evening, I put a candle in each jar and we held our glowing memories in our hands, feeling the warmth of love both from the light and from the glowing words. The girls went to bed with their glowing memory lanterns nearby.
With Mother’s Day and Father’s Day fast approaching, this may be the perfect activity for you family to remember that special person.
Make Your Own Memory Lantern
This activity originally appeared on the What’s Your Grief website as a Thanksgiving grief activity for children and adults. I believe it could be used at any time of the year. You can see the original post HERE.
Materials You Will Need:
- Clear and clean glass jar. (I used a canning jar, but you could easily dig through your recycling container to find, clean, and reuse something!)
- Tissue paper
- Glue (I used tacky glue because that is what we had in the house! ModgePodge or school glue should also work.)
- Markers
- Paintbrush or sponge
Directions:
- First, Gather your materials and prepare your work area. We used paper plates to hold the glue and sponge brushes.
- You do not need a lot of tissue paper. One sheet of each color was plenty for our three lanterns. Rip a small piece of tissue paper.
- Next, Using markers, write a word or short phrase of a memory onto the tissue paper. This was tricky, and many times we had to rewrite our memory because the tissue paper ripped when using the markers.
- Using the sponge brush, or whatever you have, apply the glue to a small area of the glass jar.
- Then, Tap the tissue paper onto the jar.
- You can apply glue over the top of the tissue paper, just be careful as the tissue paper can tear easily and the markers may bleed.
- When your memory lantern is completed to your liking, let it dry. I turned ours upside down as we had some glue on the bottom.
- Finally, when it is dark outside, add a real or LED candle, and let your memories glow!
I hope that this activity brings peace and healing!
If you, or someone you care about is dealing with grief, here are some tips for coping with grief from people who are dealing with it themselves!
Our ClassCee Life provides general educational information from someone who has experienced great loss. You should not substitute information on the Our ClassCee Life website for professional advice.
