Memory Boxes

For some reason, other people think I'm well organised and all my memory boxes etc are complete. Well, sorry to disillusion you but they are not. It is a work in progress and I haven't progressed as well as I would have hoped.

Some people have been asking what I have done or put in my boxes. As i have been writing this, I am rather taken aback at how much I have done or started and it all seems a bit over the top so I'm not sure I'm the right person to be writing this!!!
Here goes to what I have done/hope to complete -
I have a box for each for the 3 children, 1 for my hubby and a single box that they will all have to share. I have also bought a plastic box file for each.

In the plastic file boxes, I have put the letters I have written or received from each person including the home made christmas/mother day cards that they made at school and I had kept. Letters that hubby and I exchanged when we were living apart until we sold the house in Kent and I could move here. I'm so pleased we'd kept the letters as it is also a record of my pregnancy with the twins. I have just put anything that needs to be kept flat in these boxes.
The children have always had a separate file for all their school certificates so their 'star of the week' certificates etc are all in that file.

My separate box contains my nursing certificates, badges and other educational certificates I have got and other things that I only have 1 of. For some reason, I'd kept some hair from when I was 12 plus some from when I first lost my hair due to chemo. There are also photos of me from the local newspaper from my Guiding Days. I played Snow White aged 12 so there is an awful photo of me complete with black wig that I probably should have binned. I think the world had to be grateful that in 1973, there were not camera phones etc so there is no permanent record of my singing.
I have written the children and hubby a letter each. That's been the hardest bit I've done so far. I got the hospice nurse and social worker to read them to make sure I hadn't accidently written something that would really upset them or be interpretted in the wrong way in the future. The letters say about how I felt when I was pregnant, giving birth and their early days. It says a bit about individual things about them and what I like/admire about them and their special qualities and what it has meant to me. I have writtten a bit about how I would like them to act in the future but doesn't say anything like 'you must get married and have children' or 'you must go to university'.

I have just said about the qualities I think are important for them to get on with their life or live their life, like the importance of kindness, thinking of other people, don't live your life in regret, be confident, learn from your mistakes. My own personal views on things and also made it clear, hopefully, that it is my view.

To my hubby, I have written a letter about our life together and what special things we've done and how we've overcome difficulties and celebrated successes.

I have also written a few letters to other important people in my life - some family and some friends.

I didn't meet my hubby till I was 31 so I had a life before that which I would like the children to know about. Hubby knows about it but whether he remembers is another question!!! Therefore, I have written a sort of mini-autobiography which I really enjoyed writing and then a very mini version for the vicar to base his speech on at my Thanksgiving Service. Presumably, he will want to give a potted history during that service of my life and as I've had several different types of jobs, moved around a bit and travelled a bit, hopefully, it will be of interest to other people as well.
To tie in with this, I have made a photo album so that you can relate my life story to the pictures. That's my current project as I said in my previous blog entry.

In the actual boxes, I've put in photos of things that are special to me and explained why they mean so much to me like why certain bits of my jewellery are sentimentally precious (none of my possessions are worth anything in monetary value) and why certain ornaments are special. That again, gives detail about my life and what and why things were important to me like an old knitted cat and my charm bracelet.

I'm going to put in some perfume if I can hold of the one I currently use.

I have also used the Winston Wish cards that say 'I like you because .......' etc. I found some of them really difficult to fill in due to the age of my children and thinking they will have these as adults as well so it's difficult to find suitable words sometimes.

I have put in some special stones and shells from beaches we've visited.

AJ has asked for a certain photo of us together and something he made for mother's day once as well.

I have no idea how we got onto this conversation but all the children at present want to keep some of my ashes so the undertaker knows this and is going to arrange some special type of container for each of them. I have no idea when it happens if they will actually want to do this but it seemed important to ask. Actually, I think it was the undertaker that suggested we ask the children about my ashes as in her experience some children do want to keep them.

I have also done a special scrapbook photo album for each of them. I tended to group them into things like birthdays, action pictures, theme parks or holidays and write special words about how the pictures made me feel. That is still a work in progress but have got to recent events so they can do it for themselves if I never have time to do it.

I have also written in the pre-printed memory books -

Dear Mum - from you to me by Neil Coxon

Memories - Julie Pinnell

You can examine the pages via amazon to see if they are of any help to you. Some of the pages I can not fill in or seem inappropriate so have currently left blank. The 'Dear Mum' is a series of books but do not have a 'Dear Wife/Husband' and 'friend' did not seem right. I like the feel of the pages in this series.
For my hubby, I have used the Julie Pinnell book. It approaches things slightly differently and I think some of it is too americanised for me and the paper is shiny so I have had trouble with the type of pen I used to avoid smudging.

As I have had so much time to prepare for my death, I've done much more memory stuff than I ever intended to do and I expect will never be looked at properly anyway!!!
I have made each of them an individual and small cross stitch but I haven't finished my hubby's yet which upset me on the morning that my body decided to drown itself. I couldn't believe with so much time on my hands that I hadn't finished anything properly. I am aiming to do the cross stitch in the chemo clinic wait tomorrow but expect I'll just go to sleep or chat!!!

The other thing I did was to ask some very long standing friends - school and student nurse training day friends if they would write something for me to give to the family. They have all made a small photo album up and put some photos in and written things about what we used to do. The only problem is that everybody is far too polite about me and nobody says about how horrible I was or bad tempered etc. They all do say about my drinking habits in my 20s but that is as bad as it gets!! I just hope the children don't think I was some kind of saint as I don't want them to have this as a pressure - that their mother was faultless and not thoughtless. I really appreciate these little books of memories and the children, of course, find my 1980s fashion victim, hilarious.