Our Monthly Tip: Create a Grief Shrine or Memorial Altar

A reflective grief memorial with personal objects
of the loved one placed on a dresser
Pinterest.com

Our Tip of the Month

For centuries, various cultures have embraced the concept of creating altars or shrines to honor loved ones who’ve died. Perhaps the most well-known are the Mexican ofrendas to celebrate Día de los Muertos. But most of us have come across roadside shrines dedicated to those killed in vehicle accidents, or witnessed the collections of candles, stuffed animals and other tokens of mourning that appear following mass disasters such as school shootings. In the Victorian era, people had their loved ones’ hair crafted into intricately detailed scenes that could be mounted on the wall in their memory. Particularly during the isolation caused by COVID-19, setting up a grief shrine or memorial altar in your home or garden can be a uniquely personal way to memorialize a death and release feelings of grief.

Memorial altar with crystals, candles and dried flowers offers a reminder of the energy of the person who died
Pinterest.com

How-to Suggestions

Choose a format: Identify a table or garden stone on which to set up your altar, or find an appropriate container such as a glass jar or urn, a photo frame in which to create a collage, or a shadow box that can display multiple objects. You may want to choose a place that was particularly treasured by your loved one — a chair, a spot in the garden or even a lookout point or hiking path. Sometimes, people have turned whole bedrooms into shrines. The first rule of making a memorial altar or grief shrine is that there are no rules, as the wide variety on Pinterest makes clear.

Find your sacred objects: Popular items include candles, crystals, flowers and photos. Personalize the grief shrine with things unique to the person you’re memorializing — possibly including lighthearted items, such as a reference to an inside joke. Write down sayings or phrases that remind you of the person, or compose a farewell letter. Find a way to elicit that person’s spirit in the choice of objects, colors and textures. This creative process alone can prove invaluable to processing grief.

A grief altar creates a private space to read, sit, smell, reflect and touch
articles of the person memorialized
magiesmasknest.tumblr.com

Set up your altar or memorial: If creating an altar, it can be helpful to drape a table with a cloth or colorful fabric. If setting up a memorial, find an appropriate wall, mantel or garden space. Arrange the items in a way that is aesthetically pleasing and meaningful to you. The wonderful thing about grief altars or shrines is that they can evolve — items can be shifted or changed depending on your mood or stage of grief. At some point, you may even choose to dismantle it.

A grief shrine or memorial altar can be a place to engage in wailing or other deep forms of mourning — or to simply pause, light a candle and wish your departed loved one well.