Sympathy gift ideas: 12 honest picks instead of flowers

Good sympathy gift ideas keep helping after the flowers fade: a meal, a specific offer of help, a donation in their name, a tree or plant, a framed photo, a handwritten letter, or something for the garden they’ll see every day. Pick what fits the person, send it when it’s needed, and say why in a line or two.

Flowers are a kind gesture, and there’s nothing wrong with sending them. But they arrive all at once, in the first few days, and they’re gone by the time the house goes quiet. This guide goes through twelve sympathy gifts that stay a little longer, when to send them, what to write in the card, how to choose memorial gifts for the person you have in mind, and the etiquette worth knowing: when flowers are still right, what some faiths do instead, and what “in lieu of flowers” is asking of you.

Why look for sympathy gifts other than flowers?

Nobody needs a reason to send flowers, and the Emily Post Institute notes they can be sent to the bereaved’s home, workplace, or to the funeral home. If that’s what you want to send, send it.

The trouble is timing. In the first week, a family can end up with a living room full of arrangements, then very little once the funeral is over. Linnea Crowther at Legacy.com puts it plainly: in the days and weeks after the funeral, grievers can feel like they’re totally alone.

The sympathy gift ideas below are chosen with that stretch in mind. Some are practical, some are keepsakes, and a few are memorial gifts meant to stay put. What makes sympathy gifts work is that someone thought about the person who’s left.

Sympathy gift ideas: the Cardinal Stake in Raw Steel on a winter tree

12 sympathy gift ideas instead of flowers

Here are twelve, roughly in order from the practical to the lasting. Pick one. You don’t need to do all of them, or any of them perfectly.

A meal, or a meal that turns up later

Food is the oldest of sympathy gifts. Legacy.com notes that bringing food after a death is a tradition that reaches far back in history, and The Compassionate Friends, writing for friends of bereaved parents, says prepared food is almost always welcome, especially dishes that just need warming.

Use containers they don’t have to return. Nobody grieving wants to track down your casserole dish.
Think about the freezer. A frozen meal is there on a night nobody feels like cooking.
Send it from a distance. Sympathy gifts can travel. Readers writing in to Legacy.com suggested restaurant gift cards, and a local delivery card does the same job.

A specific offer of help

“Let me know if you need anything” is kindly meant, but it hands the work back to the person grieving. The Compassionate Friends’ advice is simple: be specific in your offers of help.

Specific sympathy gifts of time sound like this: “I’m mowing your yard on Saturday mornings through the summer.” “I’ll pick the kids up from school on Thursdays this month.” “I’m going to the store Tuesday. Text me a list.”

Legacy.com’s readers pointed to the same kind of help: families with young children may need child care while they plan a funeral, and an older widow may be glad of help with lawn care or snow removal.

A donation in their name

If the family has named a charity, give there. If they haven’t, pick a cause the person who died cared about: the library, the animal shelter, the volunteer fire department, the church food pantry.

Like other sympathy gifts, a donation means more with a line in your card saying where you gave and why. “For the animal shelter, because she never once turned away a stray” tells the family you knew her. There’s more on amounts in the section on “in lieu of flowers” below.

A potted plant or a memorial tree

Plants make sympathy gifts that stay around after the bouquets go. Legacy.com notes that many flower providers also offer potted plants, which can be a longer-lasting remembrance, and its readers mentioned a memorial tree or garden plant as a touching alternative.

If you’re in Texas, the calendar helps. Texas A&M AgriLife says the optimum time for tree planting in Texas is fall, winter, so a tree given in autumn can go in the ground before spring. Make sure they have somewhere to put it, and offer to dig the hole.

Something for the garden that stays

For people who spend their mornings outside, one of the memorial gifts they’ll see every day is a piece for the garden: a bench, a stepping stone with a name on it, a birdbath, or a steel silhouette on the tree they look at from the kitchen.

That last one is what we make. Our pieces are solid steel and tap into a tree, a wooden fence post, a porch post or a wall with a hammer, so there’s nothing to plant or water. Our guide to memorial garden ideas for a small space goes further, with ideas for a corner bed, a single tree or a patio.

Butterflies Stake in Raw Steel on a tree in spring

A framed photo

Legacy.com notes that photos are almost universally treasured after a death. The memorial gifts that mean a lot are the photos the family doesn’t have: the person at your wedding, on the fishing trip, laughing at something off camera. Print it, put it in a plain frame, and write on the back where and when it was taken.

A handwritten letter with a memory

Sympathy gifts don’t come simpler: this one costs a stamp. Legacy.com calls it incredibly meaningful to write a note to a grieving friend with your own memories of their loved one. Tell a story they might not know: the time he drove two hours to jump your car, or what she said to you on your first day at the job.

A bird feeder and a bag of seed

For someone who watches the yard, a feeder makes one of the quieter sympathy gifts: a reason to look out the window each morning. Cornell’s All About Birds says nearly any bird feeder you put out ought to attract Northern Cardinals, and that cardinals eat many kinds of birdseed, particularly black oil sunflower seed. Set it up near a shrub, in view of the window they sit by, then bring a refill in a month.

A comfort basket for the long days

Legacy.com suggests a gift basket of non-perishable snacks, and it’s one of the sensible sympathy gifts, because grief doesn’t keep regular mealtimes. Fill it with crackers, good coffee or tea, soup in a carton, and clementines, plus paper plates, tissues, and stamps for the thank-you notes.

A book of memories

Ask a dozen people who knew the person to write down one memory each, then gather them in a plain notebook. It takes some organizing, but few memorial gifts give a family stories they hadn’t heard, in handwriting they’ll recognize.

A standing date

Some sympathy gifts aren’t things at all. What helps is a regular hour with someone who isn’t afraid of the subject. Put it on your calendar and keep it, especially once the first month is over and other people have drifted back to their own lives.

Your company on the hard dates

Write down the date of the death, the birthday, the wedding anniversary and the first holidays, then show up on those days with a card, a call or one of the sympathy gifts above. The Compassionate Friends, writing about bereaved parents, names the anniversary of the child’s death, their birthday and holidays like Christmas Day as especially hard days. You can’t fix those days. Just don’t let them pass unremarked.

When to send sympathy gifts: after the casseroles stop

The first week after a death is crowded: a funeral to plan, relatives in from out of town, a lot of food. Then, somewhere around the second or third week, the cars leave the driveway and the house goes quiet. That’s often when sympathy gifts do the most good.

Right away: food, practical help, a card.
A few weeks later: a meal for the freezer, a letter, a phone call. One reader quoted by Legacy.com suggested you put a reminder on your calendar for two months out to check on her.
Months later: a tree in planting season, memorial gifts for the garden, a framed photo you finally found in a box.
On the dates: the birthday, the anniversary, the first holidays, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
Much later: a note that says you still think of them. The Compassionate Friends asks friends to stay around for the “long haul”, not only for the first few months.

The same goes for flowers. The Emily Post Institute notes that some close friends send flowers to the home over the course of a few months as a reminder of their love and concern.

If you’re ordering sympathy gifts to be shipped, allow time. Our orders are processed in 1 to 2 business days, and delivery takes 5 to 7 business days after that, within the US.

Mama Bird Stake with one egg in the nest, in the weathered Raw Steel finish

A casserole and a jar of soup left on a porch step

What to write in the card

Whatever sympathy gifts you send, the card is where most people freeze. You don’t need much. AARP’s guide to condolence letters says three or four lines are enough, and that a week or two after the death is the ideal, but it’s never too late to write.

A simple shape that works:

Say you’re sorry, plainly. “I’m so sorry about your mom.”
Share one memory. The AARP guide suggests telling a story, if you have one, about how they touched your life.
Use their name. For bereaved parents especially, The Compassionate Friends says hearing others say the name of their child can be a priceless gift.
Make a specific offer, if you mean it. “I’ll call on Sunday.”
Sign off warmly. “With love” is fine.

Leave out comparisons to your own losses and the old lines about time. The same AARP guide advises against writing about your own losses and calls the familiar line about time a cliché.

Memorial gifts need only a line of their own. A few to borrow or change:

“For the tree outside the kitchen window. Thinking of you.”
“She always had a feeder going. I hope this keeps the birds coming.”
“No need to put it up yet. It’ll keep until you’re ready.”
“Dinner’s in your freezer. Nothing to return.”

How to choose sympathy gifts for the person who’s left

The right sympathy gift ideas depend on the person who’s grieving as much as on the loss.

The gardener. A tree for fall planting, a perennial, or a piece for the garden.
The bird lover. A feeder with seed, a field guide, or a steel bird for the tree they watch. Our Birds collection has cardinals, a hummingbird and more.
The apartment dweller. No yard, so skip the tree. A houseplant, a framed photo or a memory book are sympathy gifts that fit their life. If they have a patio with a wooden post or a wall, and the landlord doesn’t mind, a small steel piece can go there.
Someone who has lost a parent. Something that holds a memory of their mom or dad. We wrote a separate guide on a memorial gift for the loss of a father.
A widow or widower. Practical help first: the jobs the other person always did. Memorial gifts can come later.
Parents who have lost a child. Go gently. Say the child’s name. Keep showing up.
The person who says they don’t want anything. Believe them, mostly. Send a card and a meal, and keep checking in.

When you’re torn between two sympathy gift ideas, choose the one that shows you knew the person who died. A generic gift says you’re sorry. A specific one says you remember.

A lasting outdoor piece, and why people choose cardinals

Some memorial gifts work because they’re seen every day without anyone going looking for them. A bird on the tree out front is one of those.

Many people hold that seeing a cardinal means someone they’ve lost is near. It’s a folk belief, handed from person to person, not a fact, and nobody can tell you what to make of it. Our article on what it means when you see a cardinal goes into where the belief comes from.

What’s true is that the real bird suits the role. Cornell’s All About Birds notes that cardinals don’t migrate and they don’t molt into a dull plumage, so the same red bird is in the yard in January, through the holidays and the gray mornings. Cornell also says pairs may stay together throughout winter, which is part of why a pair can feel right after the loss of a husband or wife.

A steel cardinal doesn’t replace the real one. It’s the outline that’s there on the mornings the real bird doesn’t come.

Kissing Cardinals in Black on a tree in winter

If you’re giving one of these memorial gifts, a few practical notes:

Finish. Raw Steel weathers outdoors, with most of the change in the first several months before it holds steady, and Black keeps a clean, consistent look.
Size. Most pieces run 7 to 17 inches, and each product page lists the exact dimensions.
Setting it. It taps into a tree, a wooden fence post, a porch post or a wall with a hammer, with a small pilot hole first in hard wood.
Placement. Leave it to them. They’ll know which window they look out of and which tree their person loved.

When flowers are still the right call

None of these sympathy gift ideas mean you shouldn’t send flowers. They’re still a fine choice when:

The family hasn’t asked for anything else, and you know the service will have them.
You want something at the service itself. The Emily Post Institute notes that good friends or family members often choose to send this type of arrangement to the location where the service will be held.
You don’t know the family well. A modest arrangement or a plant with a simple card is a familiar, respectful gesture.
It’s what the person loved. If she grew roses all her life, roses say it.

Religious customs worth knowing

Customs around flowers and sympathy gifts differ from faith to faith and family to family. When you’re not sure, ask the funeral home or a close friend of the family. One example worth knowing is Jewish mourning:

Chabad.org explains that the Jewish custom is not to serve fancy foods, nor have flowers or music at the funeral.
For a shiva call, the week of mourning at home, Ron Wolfson’s guide at My Jewish Learning says liquor, candy, or flowers are not usually sent, and that personally prepared and/or delivered food is a more traditional act of comfort.
The same guide says a donation to a charity designated by the mourners would be another appropriate way to honor the deceased.
Rabbi Danielle Upbin, also writing for My Jewish Learning, notes that knowing the family’s dietary restrictions is helpful before you bring food, and that the most important thing to bring is yourself.

So for a Jewish family in mourning, the usual sympathy gifts are food or a donation, and flowers usually aren’t among them. Other faiths have their own customs, and plenty of families mix traditions. If the obituary or the funeral home says what the family would like, go by that.

What “in lieu of flowers” is asking

When an obituary says “in lieu of flowers,” the family is telling you where they’d like the money to go, often to a charity or a memorial fund. It’s a request rather than a rule, but it’s worth honoring. The Emily Post Institute’s guidance comes down to a few points:

Give to the place they named. Emily Post suggests you consider giving at least what you would have spent on a flower arrangement.
Let the charity tell the family. Include the deceased’s family’s address so the charity will know where to send the acknowledgement.
Don’t send cash instead. Emily Post notes that ordinarily, cash isn’t sent to the family in place of flowers or a charitable contribution, though there are exceptions.
Flowers as well are allowed. The same page says you may still send flowers in addition, but if you’re sending one thing, follow the family’s wishes.

Sympathy gifts sent weeks later don’t go against an “in lieu of flowers” request. Give to the charity now, and save the keepsake for when it’s wanted.

Memorial gifts for the yard

If you’ve settled on something for the garden, these are the memorial gifts we’d point you to. Each is solid steel, in a Raw Steel or Black finish.

Cardinal Stake: a single cardinal in full silhouette, for the tree they see from the window in winter.
Kissing Cardinals: a pair, beak to beak, cut as one piece. For the loss of a husband or wife.
Butterflies Stake: butterflies on a cut branch. Some people think of a butterfly the way others think of a cardinal, as a sign that someone they’ve lost is close.
Mama Bird Stake: a mother bird with one, two or three eggs in the nest. For the loss of a mother, with an egg for each of her children.
Hummingbird Stake: a hummingbird mid-hover, for someone who kept a feeder by the porch.

If a different bird was theirs, the full Birds collection has a blue jay, a woodpecker, an owl and more. If it isn’t quite right once it arrives, there’s a 30-day return window from delivery; email [email protected] first.

Hummingbird Stake in Black on a tree in summer

Questions customers ask

How do I install it?
Find your spot, then tap the stake in with a hammer. If the wood is hard, drill a small pilot hole first and it will go in easier.

Will it arrive in time for a holiday gift?
A lot of these are bought as gifts. Order early during Christmas, Valentine’s Day and other peak weeks to make sure it arrives on time.

What can you send instead of sympathy flowers?