Cheri's Journey: Leave a Legacy of Love
“It's a conversation about the impact you want to have and the legacy you want to leave. Who's going to remember my name? How can I make the most difference?”
When Cheri Parent first walked through the doors of Mourning Hope more than 20 years ago, she never could have imagined how much the organization would become a part of her life.
A neighbor had invited her to a holiday open house at Mourning Hope’s location on Baldwin Avenue, and Cheri said she immediately connected with the mission. “I'm thinking, oh, what a beautiful thing for children. Grief is such a hard thing, and my husband and I talked about grief a lot. He lost his mom young. I had just lost my mom. Neither one of us grieved very well. I thought, ‘If we would have had this, maybe that would have made a difference.’”
Shortly after, Cheri’s friend Jenny Amend was asked to help with a new Mourning Hope fundraiser, but she didn’t want to do it alone. Cheri joined her on the committee, and they helped plan the first-ever Hope in the Morning breakfast. 20 years later, they’re still at it, helping plan what has become Mourning Hope’s largest annual fundraiser.
Along the way, Cheri’s daughter Tori got involved and started doing stuffed animal drives for the kids who participated in Mourning Hope programs. When high school friends experienced the death of family members, Tori and Cheri would personally bring them to Mourning Hope and make sure they knew how to get support. “I drove several kids here to go through the young adult group. We walked them in… took their hand and walked them in because they couldn't go on their own.”
Then the unimaginable happened. Tori - healthy, young, and vibrant - was diagnosed with cancer. Cheri says, “We were not expecting that. She’d been so healthy her whole life… She still kept doing [the stuffed animal drives] even in college, donating stuffed animals and getting the other girls involved. She’d remind them, ‘Look for good ones. Look for clean ones. Remember, these are going to kids!’”
When Tori died, those same friends turned to Mourning Hope for support. “It's like [Tori] set it up for them. It was a beautiful thing.”
Tori also made plans for how she could keep making a positive impact on others, even after she was gone. “She let us know before she passed that she would like her memorials to go to Mourning Hope. So that is how our first set of memorials got set up, because of her.”
Seven years after Tori’s death, Ted was also diagnosed with cancer, and died in 2025 at 61 years old. During his time in the hospital, they had talked about what they hoped would outlive them. When they realized their estate plans still named Tori, they had what Cheri calls ‘hard, but necessary’ conversations about where they wanted their legacy to continue. Like his daughter, Ted also elected to have his memorials donated to Mourning Hope.
Now, Cheri says she regularly encourages friends to have those conversations with family earlier than they think they need to. “Have those hard conversations, and look at where you want things to go and how you want to help. For me, we have no children now. I don't have a spouse, so when I leave, I'm really looking at where can I leave [my assets] that's going to have the most impact on a community. Have that conversation too. What's made a difference in your life? Mourning Hope has made a huge difference in my life in so many ways.”
“When you're looking at designating, you need to let the people who are going to be around know why you're choosing what you're doing. I let everyone know, ‘This is why Ted and I are choosing this. We are doing this because grief is hard, and every single person is going to be touched by grief in their life.’ It goes back to that old quote that has made the biggest difference for me—‘If you have deep love, you're going to have deep grief.’ And I think that's true.”
“I was lucky. Tori told me what she wanted, and Teddy told me. And they're hard conversations. You don't want to be having them. You don't want to focus on that, but it's so important. And [how] I look at it, it's not really about money. It's a conversation about the impact you want to have and the legacy you want to leave. Who's going to remember my name? How can I make the most difference?”
For more information about memorials and planned giving to Mourning Hope, please contact Tara Gregg at tgregg@mourninghope.org.
