When Alyssa Grocutt’s father died, the funeral home engraved his fingerprints onto a necklace for her to keep as a memento.

Thirteen years later, Alyssa still wears the necklace daily. It’s the only physical object she now carries with her to remind her of her dad, but in 2008 — in the immediate aftermath of his death at an oilsands site in northern Alberta — her grief was so raw that she clung to anything he had once touched or used.

“There was one screwdriver he had that for the longest time I slept with. I slept in his T-shirts,” says Alyssa, who was 11 years old at the time.