Eco-friendly memorials for your loved one are a great way to heal your grief and leave no waste. Create holiday grave decorations and explore new rituals this season that feel personal and fulfilling.
The holiday season after someone you loved has died can be incredibly hard. Grief, and the complicated feelings that surround it, can often overshadow what once was a “merry and bright” time of the year. Someone is missing from the festivities and it’s perfectly normal to not know how to celebrate or reconcile the reality of that loss.
Last year at this time, we explored holiday rituals to honor your grief at home. This holiday season, we’d like to dive into holiday rituals and grave decorations to honor someone you love and miss this season. If you’re wondering about ways to create new holiday memories that memorialize someone you love after they die, here are a few places you can start.
Holiday Grave Decorations That Leave No Trace
Because of our conservation easement, graves at Larkspur cannot be adorned with holiday decorations that are not biodegradable. This includes little plastic trees, velvet ribbon, or most store-bought trinkets and decor. However, this policy creates an opportunity for Larkspur families to get creative when it comes to holiday grave decorations. In fact, it can feel empowering to make something totally new and totally your own for someone you loved dearly. One easy and traditional way to do this is by creating a holiday garland or loose wreath to adorn your loved one’s grave.
Each year we leave loose evergreen boughs at the trailhead for families to take on their memorial hike with them and decorate the grave of a family member they’ve lost. These springs of green can be braided with cut flowers to make a horseshoe holiday wreath that doesn’t disturb the landscape, and doesn’t leave any waste.
Last year, one of our families created the most beautiful ice sculpture using a heart-shaped baking tin to memorialize their loved one (as shown above), and we absolutely loved this idea! Small, flat ice sculptures stay in place to decorate the grave of someone you love on those cold, winter days, then when the sun comes out it melts into the soil giving the thirsty ground a much needed drink. You can use baking tins, and silicon molds to create these ice sculptures in any holiday shape that feels right for you. Grave decorations like this are a great way to create new holiday rituals to memorialize your loved one without affecting the surrounding ecosystem.
Go Caroling and Spend Time in Song
Good old fashioned seasonal singing can be a great holiday ritual and graveside memorial this holiday season. Caroling or playing music as a family (or community) beside the grave of your loved one brings an age-old tradition out of the suburban neighborhoods and into nature, dedicating those melodies directly to the people you miss most. Think about all the holiday songs the person who died loved while they were alive; what were some of their favorite instruments? People could ring bells or play harmonica, others could play guitar or violin. Some who are not so musically inclined could sing or chant or clap their hands.
Sharing holiday songs is an activity anyone can do alone or together at the graveside, and one that can help carry some of the grief you might be feeling around the holidays. Singing is an activity that helps us ground ourselves in our bodies. It helps us breathe deeper, it helps our central nervous system relax a bit more, and carries with it overall enhanced spiritual and emotional benefits. If you’re looking for a new way to memorialize your loved one this season, singing around their grave might be a good place to start.
Read, Recite, or Revisit Holiday Stories
Storytelling is a timeless way to keep the memory of someone you love alive. This holiday ritual can be especially important after someone you love dies. Gathering together to tell stories of holidays past, or to read and recite the favorite seasonal stories that your loved one enjoyed most can be a fulfilling way to carry their spirit with you throughout the season.
Storytelling is a holiday ritual most anyone can participate in, young or old, and something you can build seasonal gatherings around. Have everyone write or recite a story that commemorates a holiday event that reminds everyone of your loved one who has passed. Bring a favorite seasonal story book to the graveside of your loved one and read it outloud as a family. This kind of graveside memorial can be a way to feel held by the words of your community, while creating new holiday rituals that still include those you love and miss most.
Eco-friendly memorials and rituals like the ones mentioned above can be incredibly healing, and easily shaped to include what matters most to you and your people. If you’re wondering how you and your loved ones can go green when decorating your loved one’s grave this year or celebrating their memory through the holiday season, please reach out. We’d love to talk through the many options of what is meaningful for you and your family.