A Young Life Is a Whole Story

There is no age when losing someone is easy, but losing a young person is different. Along with grieving the person you knew and loved, there can be so much grief around everything you thought was still ahead of them. The places they would go, the people they would become, the relationships they would build and all of the ordinary parts of life you simply assumed they would get to have. Their life may have been shorter than anyone imagined it would be, but that doesn't mean there is less of a story to tell.

A young person's story can also be harder for a family to tell on its own. As our kids get older, more and more of their lives happen outside of us. Their friends know stories we don't know, conversations we weren't part of and sides of them we may never have seen. Bringing those friends into the process can help fill in parts of the story and give a family a chance to know even more about the person they loved. For a child whose life was very short, there may be fewer people who knew them, but there is still a whole story held by the people who did.

I understand this personally. My son Gage died of SIDS when he was two and a half months old. We didn't have a formal celebration of life for him, but we have continued to celebrate him and keep him part of our family in many different ways. Some of his cremated remains were planted with a tree, and some are held in the back of a ring I wear. Gage has a stocking at Christmas, and we have created stories about him and his adventures in a magical land of Candyland that his brothers and sisters hear almost every day. They didn't get the chance to grow up with him, but we have found ways for him to grow up alongside them. His life was very short, but his story continues to grow with our family.

When planning a celebration of life for a young person, start with who they were and the life they actually lived.

Tell the Whole Story
When someone dies, especially when they die young, there is a natural tendency to make them a little more perfect. As parents, we already thought our kids were pretty amazing. After we lose them, it can become even harder to talk about anything other than everything that was wonderful about them.

Of course those things belong in the room. Talk about how kind they were, what they cared about, what made you proud and what their friends loved about them. But don't lose the rest of them in the process. Maybe he never put gas in the car. Maybe she stole everyone's chargers. Maybe there were twelve glasses in his bedroom even though everyone had been asking for them for a week. Maybe she was always late. Maybe he ate everything except one chicken nugget and put the box back in the refrigerator as if that somehow meant he hadn't eaten the last one.

Those stories belong too. They are often the stories that make everyone recognize the person immediately. For a younger child, maybe it is the toilet training disaster everyone still laughs about or the time they somehow managed to smear birthday cake all over the walls. Remembering those things isn't making light of the loss. It is remembering the whole person, including the parts that made you laugh and the parts that made you lose your mind.

Look at the Life They Were Actually Living
For teenagers and young adults, so much of their life may exist on their phones. Look at their social media, the videos they made and the pictures their friends have. Ask about the group chats. Listen to their playlists. Find the ridiculous selfies, voice notes, TikToks and videos you may never have seen before. Their friends may have an entire collection of moments their family didn't even know existed.

Use those things in the celebration. A video doesn't have to be a traditional slideshow of school pictures arranged chronologically. It can include clips from friends' phones, screenshots, vacations, bad dancing, sporting events and completely ordinary Tuesday nights. Their playlist may tell you exactly what music belongs in the room.

Then look beyond the phone. Serve the food they actually loved. Bring in the sweatshirt they practically lived in. Use their favorite colors. Include the hobby they couldn't stop talking about. If everyone associates them with a particular team, game, movie, restaurant or place, bring some part of it into the day.

For a younger child or baby, look at what surrounded their life. Their toys, books, blankets, photographs, videos, songs and family routines can all help tell their story. The celebration doesn't have to look like a memorial. It should feel like the person everyone came to remember.

Let Their Friends Help Tell the Story
Friends can be an enormous part of telling the story of a young person. They knew a different version of your child. They know the jokes you didn't understand. They know what happened on the trip you only heard half the story about. They may know which song needs to be played, which pictures are actually everyone's favorites and which stories would have made your child absolutely horrified to hear told in front of their parents.

Give them room to contribute. That might mean speaking during the celebration, sending videos, sharing photographs, creating a playlist or simply sitting together and telling stories. Sometimes what they share will give you a glimpse into parts of your child's life you didn't get to see.

For younger children, that circle may include siblings, cousins, classmates, teachers, coaches, babysitters or grandparents. Everyone knew them in a slightly different way, and bringing those perspectives together can tell more of their story.

Let People Laugh
Laughter belongs in the room. It doesn't take anything away from the grief, and it doesn't mean anyone has forgotten for a moment why they are there. Sometimes it is simply what happens when people who loved the same person start telling the truth about them.

Tell the story about the empty gas tank. Show the ridiculous family group chat. Let the best friend tell the story that starts with, "His mother probably doesn't know this, but..." Play the video everyone has watched a hundred times because it still makes them laugh. For a little kid, tell the toilet training story or the completely inappropriate thing they announced in the middle of the grocery store.

There may be a moment when a room full of people who have been crying suddenly starts laughing together. Let them. That laughter is part of remembering too.

Their Life Is More Than How They Died
When a young person dies, the circumstances surrounding their death can very quickly become the thing everyone associates with them. Sometimes there are hospital stays, treatments or years of illness. Sometimes the death is sudden and completely unexpected. Sometimes there are questions that will never have satisfying answers.

Those things are part of what happened, but they are not the entirety of the person's life. A celebration of life is a chance to bring the focus back to the person rather than the circumstances of their death. You don't have to ignore how they died, but you also don't have to let it become the biggest thing in the room.

A Young Person's Legacy Can Look Different
When someone dies young, there can be a strong desire to create something permanent in their name. Families start foundations, scholarships, charitable events and programs, and those can be incredibly meaningful. But that doesn't have to happen, and it certainly doesn't have to happen immediately. A legacy does not have to be an organization.

It can be their friends getting together every year on their birthday. It can be a trip everyone keeps taking because they loved it. It can be a recipe that gets made every Christmas, a phrase everyone still says, a song that always gets played or something completely ridiculous that becomes a family tradition because they would have thought it was hilarious.

For a child who had only a very short life, legacy may look different again. It may be the ways that knowing and loving that child changed the people around them. It may also be the ways a family continues to include them in the years that follow.

A young person's life may have fewer chapters than it should have had, but that doesn't make their story smaller. We cannot write the chapters they should have gotten to write themselves, but we can keep telling the story they gave us and find ways to carry it forward.

Start With Them
There is no right way to plan a celebration of life for a young person. Start with their life instead of starting with what a celebration of life is supposed to look like. Talk to the people who knew them. Look at the pictures and videos. Look at their phone if they had one. Listen to their music. Bring in the things they loved and tell the stories that actually sound like them.

Remember what made you proud, what made you laugh and what made you crazy. They don't need to become perfect in the telling. They were already loved exactly as they were, and the celebration can remember them that way too.