A Few Practical Ways To Remember Your Loved One

Introduction

When my dad died, I was afraid I would forget him and tried to hold onto every single memory I had of him. I think we all experience this fear at some point because we know it will be a long time before we will make more memories with the loved ones in our lives who have died.

Several friends of mine who have experienced grief too have different methods for collecting these memories and continually cherishing their loved ones. Today, I’d like to share a few of these ideas with you. Hopefully they help you hold onto the best moments in the time God blessed the two of you with having together. 

Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking is an art form that is not necessarily ‘in style’, but it could be a wonderful way to store any pictures you have with your loved one. Essentially, scrapbooking is an art form where one takes printed pictures and displays them artistically throughout a photo album of any size.

A lot of people think scrapbooking must be expensive. It’s true that there was a whole industry for it a few decades ago. Here are some ideas for cost-effective scrapbooking if you don’t have a family member or friend who has materials:

• Using a 3-ring binder instead of a 12x12 photo album (page protectors would still be vital)

• Regular colored cardstock is a good alternative to scrapbook paper. Cardstock can still be a bit pricey, but it doesn’t require a super specific purpose like scrapbooking paper often does.

• Getting photos printed definitely costs money, but it may be worth the price to have an easy-to-access way to remember the beautiful times you’ve had with your loved ones

Scrapbooking does not have to be complex, but there are definitely some important rules to know before beginning. If you are interested in scrapbooking photos of your loved one, I’d recommend doing a Google search to learn more.

Finding Items or Gifts From that Loved One

As you and your family find and sort your loved one’s possessions, it could be good to save some things that they gave you or you gave them. These things can be small, but even small things could remind you of your loved ones’ influences on your life. 

For example, my extended family has been carefully dividing up my grandmother’s possessions over the past few years. A precious item we found was a card I made her two years ago. I was so touched to find it still on her fridge because it showed me that she wanted to keep me in her thoughts and considered it a blessing to be my grandmother. What I wrote inside helps me remember all the things I love about her.

Another example is one of my dad’s business cards that I found under a bed a few months after he died. It had a coffee stain on it. Ordinarily a piece of paper like that would not be so precious to me, but because it was the first thing I found that reminded me of him, I felt so close to him all the sudden that I kept it.

It is not silly to keep little things that remind you of your loved one, but we also shouldn’t find comfort in the things themselves. I remember being devastated when a necklace my dad gave me broke within the first few weeks of wearing it, but after switching chains several times and continually breaking it, I eventually realized that the necklace was only one of the ways I can remember him. We can trust God to bless us with memories of our loved ones exactly when we need them.

Simply Writing Memories Down

Another way to remember the positive impact your loved one had on your life is to write the funny, beautiful, profound, and seemingly ordinary memories down on notecards as you think of them. Don’t worry about writing it perfectly. Just tell the story and find a place to put those. This is probably my absolute favorite way to keep my loved ones’ legacies fresh in my mind.

My family keeps a chest of notecards that have stories about my dad on them. My mom had these notecards available for people to write at the funeral because she wanted my sister and I to know what our dad was like and never forget all the beautiful qualities we inherited from him. There are short stories, sentences, and sympathy cards in there from relatives and friends at the funeral or who told us stories later on. My mom, my sister, and I wrote most of them the year after he died. Years later I still write some sometimes as I remember random things. We love reading through these on Father’s Day, his birthday, his ‘heavenly birthday’ (the anniversary of his death), and other times where one of us just finds herself missing him.

A Place to Keep These (Chest, Box, etc.)

There are so many good places to keep treasured items and other creative compilations you’ve made to help yourself tangibly remember your loved one’s impact on your life and any way they gave you joy.

If your loved one built something small, like a chest or a drawer unit, that could be a great place. I also know of people who have a display with pictures and mementos in a place in their house, like a bedroom or a front entrance.

Conclusion

How you’ll choose to remember your loved one’s influence in your life depends largely on your talents and interests, as well as your loved one’s personality. It may be painful to remember them sometimes because in remembering the good times, you’ll remember the loss. Even so, I hope you choose to actively remember because even though God put them in your life for a limited time, He did so for specific reasons. Any positive influence they had on you is no accident and there is so much He may want you to learn from who they were.

This does not mean that you should ever feel guilty about not dwelling on them at every minute of your life. God designed our lives as a beautiful blend of the past, present, and future. A quote I like phrases it this way: ‘Cherish yesterday, dream tomorrow, live today’. Treasure the past and enjoy reflecting on it sometimes, but live ready to go through pain, experience joy, and do wonderful things for God’s glory today. Let any joy you had in the past be an encouragement to you that just like God brought your loved one into your life to connect with you then, He will continue to send you toward more beautiful encounters of laughter, friendship, meaning, and pain. Your loss is undeniable and grief is completely normal and understandable, but God has gifts for you even now in the present that you won’t be able to enjoy in the same way if you don’t allow yourself to live in it.

I really hope that sharing some of my favorite ways to remember my loved ones has given you some ideas about how you can remember yours. It takes a lot of time to gather memories, but it is so worth it, and I hope that God helps you remember all the ways He showed his love and faithfulness in your life in the past and still today. 

Editor’s Note: The ideas shared in this article are not the only ways to remember your loved one and honor how God used them to impact your life. If you have another way you honor your loved one’s memories in your daily life or on a special day, please pray about submitting an article to this website. To learn more, visit these links:

https://www.hopeofheavenforteens.com/article-library/how-to-write-an-article

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