Memorializing Your Loved One

Yesterday, I attended a one year anniversary memorial service for the wife of a client I have been seeing for bereavement counseling for more than 8 months. He is an 85 year old gentleman, a retired minister, I will call H., who was married to his wife, B, for 61 years until her death from renal failure a year ago. The event was a heart-warming gathering of family, friends, neighbors, and former colleagues for an afternoon service.

Shortly after I began meeting with H, he expressed a desire to complete a project B. had engaged in during the two to three years prior to her death. She had loved poetry since childhood, and had begun to organize and assemble poems she had been collecting over a period of seventy years. She intended to give them to her grandchildren “with the hope that they will have something from me which speaks to them in their own life journeys.”

What was special about this gathering was that it was held in their home, displaying paintings, objects d’art and photographs they had collected over the years. Many of these were hers, because she had been a gifted painter and photographer. H. had decided that having some of the guests select a reading from the handmade books he had printed of her collection, and comment on why it was meaningful to us. This was the tribute he wished to make to his wife as he marked the first anniversary of her death.

What a wonderful way to memorialize B’s life, and to honor and preserve memories of her! Despite many loving tears, everyone who participated, celebrated who she was as a wife, mother, friend and colleague. Like many of the individuals I portrayed in my book, The Five Ways We Grieve, H. chose what I termed the ‘Memorialist path toward healing’ honoring B and preserving her memory on the occasion of this very special first anniversary.

I hope this example may inspire readers and grievers to honor their lost loved ones in ways that are personal and meaningful to them.