The death of a loved one can be the most intense stressor anyone ever experiences. The intense, life-consuming state of grief can cause ongoing distress for years to come. The bereaved are more likely to attempt suicide, and it can be easy to become isolated with deep feelings of loneliness.
When we lose someone we love, we are often faced with a loss of a part of ourselves. Our mourning is two-fold: both for the person we lost, and for the person we were when we were with them.
One place where the bereaved suffer is when they worry about losing their memories of their loved one. While your life will never be the same, memorializing your loved one can often be a helpful step in helping you feel that you are continuously keeping them alive.
Here are eight ways to remember your loved one
1. Remember their passion
Depending on what they were passionate about, there are several ways you can set up grants or charities in honor of your loved one. Finding a way to bolster something that you know they cared about can be a great way to help you feel that others will still discover their name. It doesn’t have to a big production; it can be as simple as donating a bench in their name in a park they loved or handing out a small scholarship based on the career they loved.
2. Keep them with you in the kitchen
If your loved one was a cook, food can be a great way to bond with someone and to remember them. Whether that’s discovering their cookbooks and recreating the most dog-eared recipes, or if it’s preparing a recipe you often enjoyed together, food can be a powerful way to remember your loved one. Even better is to share this recipe with others and to tell them about where the recipe came from.
3. Make a memorial
Whether it’s a granite monument, a photo collage in your home, or solar fairy lights strung in the trees, a memorial for your loved one is a way for you to stop and remember them each day. It can provide a sense of grounding to feel them near to you and to remember them.
4. Carry on a tradition
Was there something your loved one used to enjoy doing each year? A big Halloween bash or an annual summer lawn dart competition? Making this an ongoing tradition and adding new people to the group who can then learn about your loved one is a great way to keep their memory alive and keep you close to them. It can even be something small, like lighting candles on Christmas Eve or planting dahlias every spring. Whatever it is, carrying on that tradition in their honor can make you feel closer.
5. Remember their birthday
Making a point to bring family and friends together each year on their birthday can be a wonderful way to remember your loved one. Instead of only remembering them on the day they passed away, keep the joy of their birthday alive by hosting a get together or taking some time to share a meal with people who knew and loved them. Connecting is such an important part of recovering from and learning to live with grief, and this is a great way to do it.
6. Connect with others
As we mentioned, it’s easy to begin to feel isolated after suffering a loss. Many people can easily disappear in that loneliness and believe they are the only ones hurting. However, while grief is a deeply unique and individual experience, there were others that loved that person too. You and your family or you and friends should make a point to get together and connect to remember the person you all loved, not only in grief, but in happiness too. Talk about memories and funny stories. Talk about the things they liked. You might be amazed to learn that there were facets to your loved one you knew nothing about.
7. Make a keepsake
For some people, keeping something close that always reminds you of your loved one can be a truly cathartic way to remember them. When a loved one passes away, we are often left with many of their items we may be uncertain what to do with but are unwilling to throw away. One popular keepsake is to take some of your loved one’s clothes and have them made into a memorial quilt you can keep close to you. If your loved one was cremated, keeping some of their ashes in a keepsake necklace can also be a way to take them with you wherever you go.
8. Put together a video
In this technologically blessed age, we often have many videos or clips of our loved one. Collect these and put them together into a longer video that you can enjoy or that you can share with others. Gather pictures, music, or any other memorabilia people might have and make it a project to remember them by. If you’re not comfortable with doing this yourself, there are many companies that offer the service as well.
Grief is not linear
Many people are familiar with the seven stages of grief, but what many people don’t mention is that those stages are not linear. You can experience denial months after the event, you can experience an upward turn in a few short weeks, only to be faced with depression all over again. There is no set amount of time that’s appropriate to grieve the loss of a loved one, and no certain event that will make your grief easier to bear.
Accept that you will always miss your loved one and long for time with them, but also know that your grief will get smaller and easier to live with. That you will learn to navigate this new world and forge new paths, while still remembering your loved one and carrying them forward with you no matter where you go.