They’re heartbreaking stories.

The Auburn man who lost his wife and little girl in a tragic car accident, then had to put aside that grief to focus on another daughter who had been broken and battered in the same crash.

The 3-year-old whose father killed himself, leaving her to grow up without a dad.

The parents who sat vigil in the Central Maine Medical Center intensive care unit day after day, hoping their teenage daughter would wake from her coma. 

Roxann Jackson has seen it all. As a technician in the CMMC emergency room and then the ICU, she’s been with families when their loved ones died, when the first moments of shock surge into grief.

For the past few years, she has given up nights, weekends and countless hours of sleep to give those grieving families something to hold when they can’t bring home their loved ones: customized memory boxes filled with personal items requested by family members, from a lock of hair to a handprint in plaster.

“I know how important it is, what a treasured thing it is,” she said. “I know that having that tangible item is huge to somebody.”

It started three years ago with a silver belt buckle. 

Jackson was working in the ER when six people — four young friends and a couple in their 20s — were killed in a Christmas Eve car crash in Poland. She was cleaning up the ambulance bay when a belt buckle fell out of the jumbled pile of gasoline-soaked clothes. 

“I wasn’t sure who it belonged to, where it went,” she said. “It kind of bothered me that I couldn’t give it to a parent or somebody. If it was my child, I would have wanted it back.”

Nationally, maternity wards and neonatal ICUs have been making memory boxes for years. Soon after the Poland crash, Jackson started quietly offering boxes in the ER. Her first — a small container with a condolence card, forget-me-not flower seeds and a lock of hair — went to the family of a 63-year-old woman who died unexpectedly. 

At first Jackson bought the boxes at Marden’s, then at a local craft store. Some were heart-shaped, others round or square. She decorated them differently but always stenciled at least one small elephant “because elephants never forget,” she said. 

Jackson made about two dozen boxes in the ER. After a year and a half, her job shifted to the ICU. She took the memory boxes with her. 

In the ICU Jackson was able to get to know patients and their families better, and her program grew. The ICU began donating its returnable bottle money to help pay for the boxes. When Jackson wasn’t around, staff members and social workers approached grieving families on her behalf. 

Although some families have hesitated — wary that a memory box might be creepy or gruesome — social worker Sue Applegate has never had anyone turn one down.

“It gives them something to hold onto that was very much that person,” Applegate said. “One of the most difficult things for families to do is actually leave their loved one here and know that is the last real contact they’re going to have with them.” 

Jackson has put together 35 to 40 boxes since she’s been in the ICU. All include a card, a worry stone and, when they’re in season, forget-me-not seeds. Sometimes she adds a hospital bracelet or other items of significance. A couple of times, family members have asked for photos of their
loved ones’ tattoos. More often, families request a lock of hair and a handprint in
plaster.

“I recently did one for a young man who committed suicide, and he had a 2- or 3-year-old daughter,” Jackson said. “I just kept thinking, ‘I’ve got to get a good handprint because she’ll never get to hold her daddy’s hand and remember it.’ And I did. I thank God I did.”

William White of Auburn recently received five memory boxes in honor of his 4-year-old daughter Marissa, a happy, energetic little girl who was killed in November in a Minot Avenue car crash that also killed her mother and seriously injured her older sister. White’s boxes each have, among other items, a lock of Marissa’s hair and a plaster handprint. He will keep one box, give one each to his two older children around Christmastime and put away one each for his two younger children.

“It’ll be a reminder,” he said. “I was thinking they would want something to remember her by or to have something from her later in life.”

Chelsey Tobias of Kents Hill got a memory box recently, too — her own.

Tobias, 19, was severely injured in a head-on car crash in Farmingdale in June. She spent 36 days in the ICU, some of that in a coma. She wasn’t expected to live, and Jackson planned a memory box for her parents.

But Tobias emerged from her coma. Instead of a lock of hair and a handprint, her box got filled with the putty she used during physical therapy and the keepsakes friends and family had brought her in the hospital. Now home, Tobias keeps her box close, a reminder of what she overcame.

“It’s hard; it’s hard to look back on everything, but it’s great to have something like that,” she said. “And for someone to take their own time and their own money to make it is great. It meant a lot.”

It can take Jackson hours to get what she needs for a box, especially
if a handprint is involved, and she does it all on her own time. When
Marissa White came into the hospital, Jackson was scheduled to work
from 6:30 a.m. to 7:15 p.m. She ended up staying until 1:30 a.m. just
for her boxes. Then she spent the next couple of days sanding the
handprints and finishing them with bronze paint.

It’s time away from her family, time she could be spending on herself, but Jackson can’t imagine turning away anyone.

“I know the value and the meaning behind it,” she said.

Jackson has gotten so many requests for memory boxes that she has trouble keeping up with demand. Art students at the Franklin Alternative School in Auburn now decorate the boxes for her, carefully covering them with intricate designs, patterns and inspirational quotes, as well as the stenciled elephant. Some of their boxes went to White and his children.  

Art teacher Karen Ogg believes Jackson’s boxes are therapeutic not only for the recipients but also for her teenage students, who have come to realize their artwork can be meaningful and comforting to others. 

“I think it is so tender and beyond anything in the 26 years or so I’ve been teaching that ties community to the classroom,” she said.  

Applegate, the social worker, sees every day the kind of impact Jackson’s boxes have. Grieving families often leave the hospital cradling them close.

“It’s taking away something from the hospital at such a tragic time
and a time of loss, a sense of bringing that loved one with them,” Applegate
said. “In the darkest hour, there was a little bit of light.”

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Monica Wentworth, 13, looks at the items inside a memory box made for her family after her 4-year-old sister and mother were killed in a car crash in November. The box was made by Roxann Jackson, the critical care technician who cared for Wentworth and her family following the accident. The memory box was painted by Tyler Bisbee, a student at Franklin Alternative School.