A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Margaret,

Thanks for your note and excellent question.

Memory gardens, like any other shrine or memorial, are wonderful reminders of someone who was important to us. From that point of view they have excellent meaning and value.

But of themselves, they do not facilitate recovery.

And unfortunately, they can inadvertently keep someone from taking the actions of recovery, since the memorial creates the false idea that some kind of recovery action has been taken.

The key is for you to take actual actions that help you discover and complete what was left emotionally unfinished for you in your relationship to your son and his untimely death. The actions that can help you are detailed in The Grief Recovery Handbook [available in most libraries and bookstores].

If you haven’t taken a formal set of actions towards recovery, we’d strongly recommend you do that first, before creating the garden.

If you have already discovered and taken actions that allow you to feel emotionally complete with your son—or after you do take those actions—then the garden will be a positive remembrance for you.

[Note: We’ve known many people who’ve invested an incredible amount of time, effort, energy, and money into creating remembrances of one kind or another, thinking that the thing they created would help their broken hearts. What they discovered, after the fact, was that during the time they were planning and building the shrine, they were distracted to some degree from the depth of their grief about the person who died. When the project was done, they realized their broken hearts were still broken. That’s why we said what we said about memorials above, “Of themselves, they do not facilitate recovery.”]

From our hearts to yours,

Russell and John