Memorialization
Creating an Online Memorial
MemoryBox is the nation's premier memorialization website and app. With a MemoryBox memorial, you, your family and friends can post and share photos and memories of your lost loved one, simply, from any device, and from anywhere in the world.Every Cremstar cremation comes with a complimentary online memorial at MemoryBox.com. (For an example, click here.)
Whether you're curating your digital identity before you pass on — ensuring you're remembered the way you want to be remembered — or you're creating an online memorial for someone who's already transitioned, this powerful application makes it easy.
- "Study after study has shown that nostalgia acts as a psychological resource that helps people cope with life's stressors and uncertainties, resulting in increased positive mood, self-esteem, feelings of belongingness, and perceptions of meaning in life. If you're a family member or friend of someone who's dying, or of someone who has recently passed, MemoryBox can help you cope with your loss more effectively, delivering real clinical benefits."
Dr. Clay Routledge
World-renowned expert in the psychology of nostalgia, memory and death
World-renowned expert in the psychology of nostalgia, memory and death
Creating an "Event" Memory
With MemoryBox, you can create several types of Memories: People (e.g. online memorials); Places; Things; Ideas; and Events.Event Memories are unique because they have a specific date and time associated with them; e.g. 01/26/2023 - 2:00-4:00 PM EST. When folks join an Event Memory, as long as their phone is equipped with the MemoryBox app, all the photographs they take with their phone during the event are copied from their photo roll and posted to the Event Memory online automatically — even if they're not actively using the MemoryBox app but just their regular photo function!
- No more: "I'll send you those photos later." Or, "I'll get you a thumb drive once I transfer them." You know this hardly ever comes true!
With MemoryBox, all the photos are assembled automatically into one place where everyone can share the event, and those fond memories are never more than a smartphone away.
Cost: Free
If you are planning a Life Celebration Event, here's a checklist to arrange the "Ultimate Party" - the only one the guest of honor is guaranteed to miss.
If you're looking to shape a digital legacy, here is a series of questions that will help you create a 360° profile ... before it's too late. How do you want to be remembered? Make sure it's the right way by preparing your online memorial at MemoryBox today.
To build your own practical, comprehensive and secure My Exit Plan, plus other forms and Planning Ahead kits you can download, visit our Forms & Planning Kits section.
Benefits of Memorialization
Until well into the 20th century, more than nine in 10 Americans said they believed in God and belonged to an organized religion, with the great majority of them calling themselves Christian. That number held steady - through the sexual-revolution '60s, through the rootless and turbulent '70s, and through the "greed is good" '80s.But in the early 1990s, religious non-affiliation in the U.S. started to rise - and rise, and rise. By the early 2000s, the share of Americans who said they didn't associate with any established religion (also known as "nones") had doubled. By the 2010s, this assortment of atheists and agnostics had tripled in size.
According to Michael Norton, Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and a member of Harvard's Behavioral Insights Group:
- "Rituals in the face of loss can help us feel less grief ... And by rituals we don't mean 'elaborate religious ceremonies' - in our research, we often find that the majority of people's rituals are private and idiosyncratic to them. No other family does Thanksgiving (and meals in general) quite the way that your family does, and no other couple has the same secret nicknames and phrases. We feel out of control when we experience loss - we didn't want it to happen, but we couldn't control it. That is, in and of itself, a very unpleasant feeling, that sense that you're not in charge of your life. Rituals restore some of that control."
In other words, the feelings of closure and relief that come from memorialization don’t need to be religious in origin.
- "Thinking that rituals are irrational ('This is crazy, why would I do this?') is actually a barrier that it can be helpful to overcome. Our research suggests that embracing them, no matter how silly, can improve our well-being. I've seen so many new rituals, and adaptations of rituals. People are using technology to recreate their rituals as best they can. But they're also inventing new ones."
While we may be less religious today, we can still leverage technologies like MemoryBox to memorialize our lost loved ones, and to perform rituals around them.
If you have any questions, please contact us:
- By phone: (888) 802-0999, available 24/7. (Se Habla Español.)
- By email: info@cremstar.com
- By chat: 7AM - 10PM Eastern Time, seven days a week; click on the round red chat button on the bottom right of the screen.
If you are in immediate need because a death has already occurred, order a direct cremation now. If a death is imminent (a matter of days or weeks), visit the Cremstar Cremation Cost Calculator for an estimate and to email yourself a customized "Order Now" link. If you are preparing for the future and want to lock in a price, visit our Planning Ahead for Cremation section.