How I’ve gotten to know more than 50 people I’ve never met this year

Kathy was an incredible mentor, a champion of women in the workforce, and a grandmother whose pride outshone other grandmothers everywhere.

Jim was an avid outdoorsman who found meaning in faith later in life, fell in love when he least expected it, and left a blueprint for how to live for his children.

Jen, who battled cancer like a warrior, embodied positivity, maintained lifelong friendships with her sorority sisters, bought a camper van to go on adventures with her twin daughters, and made killer chocolate chip pancakes.

Lena was a Russian Jewish immigrant who approached the world with a sense of wonder and gratitude, found great joy in motherhood, and once inspired a friend to buy half a cow (that one’s a long story, but well worth hearing!).

I never met Kathy, Jim, Jen, or Lena, but I feel like I knew them—the best of them, the pieces of them that friends, family, and colleagues wrote about in tributes that promise to keep their legacies alive for their loved ones and the next generation.

Tribute books that honor the legacy of lost loved ones

Since I launched Modern Heirloom Books in 2016 upon writing and designing a tribute book in honor of my mom, who had died suddenly shortly after I became a mom myself, I have helped more than 100 people honor their own lost loved ones in such books. It is, truly, one of the greatest honors of my career to memorialize people in this way.

When I help people tell their own stories through personal history interviews or memoir coaching, I often talk about how the journey is as important as the finished product. Similarly, when I talk with people who want to celebrate the life of someone they have loved and lost, I talk not just about the journey (because writing about loss can certainly be a healing path through grief), but about the experience after the book is printed: The book, I advise, should be a living memorial, something that you pull out to ‘visit’ with the deceased through the photos and words on the page.

Most people who come to me hoping to make a memorial tribute book do so with the intention of gifting them to the children of the deceased. Sometimes, those children are adults who have given the eulogy at their parent’s funeral service; other times, they are mere babies who will have no real memories of their parent.

Many times, a spouse, parent, or child wants to memorialize their relative in print for themselves and their family.

Either way, gathering stories about the deceased from a group of people ensures that many sides of their personality are highlighted. Work colleagues share stories that family members likely never heard before. Friends offer up remembrances from younger years that enlighten another side of the subject. And family members get to the heart of the person, telling everyday stories alongside monumental ones, revealing what they loved about the person, what they will miss, what they want to remember.

All of these tributes together create a lasting legacy of the deceased, and I am privileged and honored to help usher them into the world—just as I am privileged and honored to “get to know” these individuals through the love and words of those they have left behind.

Tribute book resources and ideas

• 8 tips for creating your own tribute book in honor of a lost loved one

• Get 35 questions to prompt memories of your lost loved one.

• If you’d like to create a book but would rather have professional guidance along the way, contact Dawn to learn how we could work together on a tribute book or other heirloom book project.