The Story Doesn’t End in Days, Weeks or Months

There is so much to do in the days and weeks after someone dies. The paperwork, the funeral, the memorial service, the celebration of life, all in the midst of tremendous grief. We gather, tell stories, look at pictures and hug people we haven’t seen in years and some we’ve never met, all to honor this person who mattered so much to us. But celebrating their life doesn’t stop there.

We continue to honor them in quiet, everyday ways. We make their favorite foods, keep their traditions going and tell their stories again and again. There is no reason the celebration we had when someone died needs to be the last one.

The People Hearing the Stories Change Too
This is one of the biggest reasons the stories keep going. Families change over the years. Babies are born, grandchildren grow up, people get married and new people become part of the family. Some may only know a name or recognize a face in a photo but never had the chance to know the person behind it. Five years later, the people sitting around the table are different.

 A grandchild who wasn’t even alive when their grandmother died can hear what she was really like. Not just where she worked or lived, but the details that made her who she was. What drove everyone crazy about her. What she always ordered at a restaurant. The phrase she said constantly. The family story that can’t be told without everyone interrupting because they remember it differently. That’s how someone becomes part of a family they never met.

 The storytellers change too. We understand our parents differently when we become parents ourselves. We see siblings and friends in new ways as time passes. Some stories don’t get told at the first gathering simply because no one thinks of them yet. Years later, someone says, “Do you remember when…” and suddenly everyone is right back there. There is always more to remember.

Candyland
There is a term used in grief, continuing bonds, for the connection we maintain with someone after they die. It shows up in stories, traditions, memories, places, objects and the small ways we keep carrying them forward. Most of us probably do it without ever giving it a name.

When I was little, my mom told me stories about Candyland and the adventures we had there. Candyland was ours. My mom died long before my children were born, and when she died, she became Queen Pamela and went to live in Candyland. Years later, when my son Gage died of SIDS, he joined her there.

My kids have grown up having adventures of their own with Queen Pamela and Gage in Candyland. It connects them to a grandmother they never met and a brother they never got the chance to grow up with. The story keeps them present in our lives every day. That’s what it means to keep someone’s story alive. They are still part of the imagination, the laughter and the everyday conversations of a family that continues to grow.

Celebrating a life can happen in a million different ways. Make Grandma’s lasagna even though nobody can quite replicate it. Play Dad’s favorite album loudly on his birthday. Go back to the vacation spot your family loved. Tell the stories your kids have already heard a hundred times.

Keep Celebrating Them
And sometimes, have a party. Bring everyone together years later. Celebrate the birthday they aren’t here for. Invite old friends, set out the photos, serve their favorite food, play the music and tell the stories again. Whether it’s a kitchen table dinner or a room full of people, both are ways of saying this life still matters. What matters is making room for them in the ongoing story of the people who loved them.

A funeral isn’t your only chance to celebrate someone’s life, and neither is a celebration of life. There can be gatherings years later and countless smaller moments in between, around a dinner table, on a family vacation, during a holiday or in an ordinary moment when a story is told again.

Years from now, the family will have changed. You will have changed. The stories may shift slightly with time. There may be someone at the table who never met the person being talked about, but by the end of the night, they will know them a little better.

Keep Their Story Alive
We don’t have to wait for a special occasion to bring someone back into the room. We do it every time we speak their name, every time we share a memory and every time we laugh at something they would have said or done. In those moments, they are still part of us and still shaping the way we see the world and each other.

Keep telling their stories and keep finding new ways to remember them. Let their life show up in ordinary days, not just the hard ones or the anniversaries. Love doesn’t end, and neither does the story.

That’s how their life becomes part of the stories that come next.