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Memory boxes hold more than memories

The purpose of a memory box is to hold memories; but as staff in the paediatric critical care unit know, it can also create opportunity for new memories to be made.

“When a child dies in hospital, parents suffer the physical loss of their child, which is devastating. What they take away from the hospital and death experience are the memories that we help to create,” says Sue MacLean, a social worker in the paediatric critical care unit (PCCU) at Children’s Hospital.

“We wanted to do something that would be demonstrative of our compassion, and provide a heartfelt keepsake that would be both meaningful and permanent for the family.”

This sentiment helped launch the memory box program in the PCCU in 1996; ten years later the program was enhanced to include all of Children’s Hospital. For any child that dies in hospital, the family is given a beautiful handmade wooden box that contains the child’s belongings, as well as photos, notes from staff, stuffed animals, footprints, a lock of hair, and any other item that the family feels will help them on their journey.

“To walk away from such a profound and tragic event with just a brown paper bag of belongings is such a minimizing representation of a child that was loved,” says MacLean, who says her own parents would have greatly benefited from such a program when her older brother passed away years ago in Montreal at the age of six.

The program was started on a self-funded shoestring budget by frontline staff who simply saw a need. “It was a collection of ideas that helped start the program,” explains Colleen Collier, a nurse in the PCCU. Shortly after the first memory boxes were given to families, staff received a Harvey F. Sullivan scholarship that provided enough seed money to help the program grow.

“It’s become really special to us as frontline staff, and demonstrates a wonderful collaboration between staff and community,” says Collier, referring to those responsible for making the wooden boxes over the years. This includes the St. Thomas Seniors’ Centre, Norman Makin, the father-in-law of a PCCU nurse, and Robert Vosper, a PCCU pharmacist’s father who made almost every memory box for the first 10 years of the program.

Four years ago, the local Lambeth Lions’ Club ‘adopted’ the program and now donate all of the handmade memory boxes to Children’s Hospital, the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Joseph’s Hospital, and the Child and Parent Resource Institute (CPRI) in London.

“The Lion’s Club just embraced this program,” says Collier, who notes that members such as Gary Martins have allowed the program to flourish.

Martins is a retired school teacher who hosts eight other Lions’ Club members in his basement workshop where the group creates 65 to 70 boxes throughout each year. He says because of the program, the local club has picked up about seven new members interested in helping make memory boxes.

“Our thinking behind our involvement with this program is simply that ‘but for the grace of God, this box could be for my grandchild,’” says Martins.

One of those boxes ended up holding memories of Stacy Ormerod’s son Deiter, who passed away seven years ago at Children’s Hospital. Through the memory box program, she says she learned to have hope for her son.

“I will always have hope for Deiter; just a different kind of hope,” she says. “I hope that his memory will live on forever. I hope that people will learn and grow from his life. I hope that the power of the special memories I have stored in his treasure box of hope will inspire others to find the strength that Deiter had to fight with all of their heart to overcome whatever life sends their way.”

MacLean strongly agrees that the memory boxes represent not just memories of the child that has passed away, but hope for the families who take great comfort in them.

“It’s kind of like a miniature hope chest,” she says. “This box of hope containing the child’s mementos can help a family carry forward their child’s memory.”

Collier says she knows of families who have displayed the memory box and its contents at their child’s funeral, and one family who even used it as an urn for their child’s ashes.

“We give them this box as a vehicle to hold their keepsakes. We want them to integrate memories that are important to them,” says Collier, who notes that for the past six years, Children’s Health Foundation and its donors such as The Brian and Heather Semkowski Family Foundation have provided funding for all of the items within the memory boxes. This includes books on how to express grief, and a special book that families can use to record milestones and memories of the child’s life.

“It’s a very special keepsake,” she says.

“We have the opportunity to help create lasting memories for families during the most painful, personal and powerful moments of their lives.”

Staff members in the Pediatric Critical Care Unit at Children's Hospital, Sheila Berdan and Sue MacLean, place items that are frequently included in the Memory Box Program into a handmade memory box at Children's Hospital.

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