Grieving a friend or a family member is one of the hardest things anyone has to do in life, but it’s a natural, inevitable thing. It can be hard to cope with someone’s absence, and a lot of traditions around death in different cultures focus on letting one’s loved ones go, to facilitate their passage to the afterlife, and so on.
A big part of it all is to honor their memories one earth, and sometimes to keep their stories alive for younger generations in the family. If you’re wondering how you can keep their memory alive, you’ve come to the right place. We have some ideas that you might find helpful, so keep reading!
Give to Charity
Everyone has the desire to do good in life, and the best way to honor someone’s memory is to keep doing good in a loved one’s name, even after their death. You can either give from your own funds or organize a charity, set up a fundraiser, or ask your friends and family for help in the matter.
If you don’t have the resources to donate financially, you can volunteer at charities and find other ways to help the causes close to your loved one’s heart.
Get a Portrait
Sometimes, hand-made portrait paintings are a great way to honor a loved one, especially if the portraits are meaningful in a way that digital photographs could not have been.
Perhaps your loved one died before they had the chance to go to a particular place they had always dreamed of visiting, or perhaps they passed away before you could spend much time with them, and now you feel like there aren’t enough photos of the two of you together. In cases like these, you can hire a portrait painter to help you turn these visions to reality.
Make a Memory Pillow
It may not be easy to go through your loved one’s things, but it’s something that you’ll have to face one day or another. In case you want something of theirs to feel close to them, you can always make a memory pillow with a favorite shirt or a sweater.
It’s a pretty great option if you want to feel like you’re holding them close, and the pillow will be a constant source of comfort on rough days.
Make a Scrapbook
Sometimes it helps to have a single place with all your loved one’s memories that you can revisit when you miss them, and the good thing about scrapbooks is that they don’t have to just contain photos.
From ticket stubs from when you went out together to notes passed between you in class or at a serious family event, there’s no end to the things you can add to a scrapbook. It might even be a good idea to write some messages and notes in there that talk about how you feel.
Making a tribute to your loved one like this and to go through all the memories you have with them is also going to be cathartic, which is another reason why it’s a great idea. No one says it’s going to be easy, but at the end of the day you’ll be glad you did it.
