Start with one memory

Don't begin by trying to summarize a person.

Choose one moment.

Perhaps it is important.

Perhaps it isn't.

A conversation in the car.

Something that happened on holiday.

A Sunday lunch.

A walk.

A disagreement you eventually laughed about.

A completely ordinary afternoon.

Write down what you remember.

You can always add another memory later.

Remember the ordinary person

After someone dies, we often preserve the milestones.

Where they were born.

What they achieved.

Their work.

Their family.

The important events of their life.

Those things matter.

But they aren't the whole person.

Remember the person who burned the toast.

Who always arrived early.

Who fell asleep during films.

Who sang the wrong words.

Who hated tomatoes.

Who called every Sunday.

Who told the same joke every Christmas.

Ordinary details can bring someone remarkably close.

Write down the things they always said

Families often carry someone's words long after they are gone.

A phrase.

A nickname.

An expression.

Something they said whenever you left the house.

The answer they always gave to the same question.

The story they always began in exactly the same way.

Write those things down as you remember them.

They may seem too small to belong in someone's life story.

They aren't.

Language is one of the ways people remain recognizable to us.

Keep their voice when you have it

If you have recordings, keep the originals.

A voicemail.

A video.

An old family recording.

Someone talking in the background of something that wasn't intended to preserve them at all.

The recording may contain nothing particularly significant.

Keep it anyway.

A transcript can preserve what someone said.

The recording preserves something else.

The rhythm.

The accent.

The pause.

The laugh.

The sound of them being there.

Let photographs open memories

Choose a photograph and don't begin by trying to document it perfectly.

Simply look at the person.

What do you remember?

What were they like then?

Where were you?

What was happening outside the frame?

What happened afterwards?

What does seeing that photograph make you remember that the photograph itself cannot show?

Sometimes the photograph isn't the memory.

It is the doorway to one.

Ask other people what they remember

You don't have to preserve someone alone.

Ask a sibling.

A friend.

A cousin.

A colleague.

Someone who knew them before you did.

Try a simple question:

What do you remember about them?

You may hear a story you've never heard.

Or discover a part of their life you barely knew existed.

Another person's memory doesn't have to replace yours.

It can sit beside it.

Let people remember differently

Two people can remember the same person differently.

One sibling remembers Dad as quiet.

Another remembers him constantly telling jokes.

A colleague knew someone completely different from the person who came home each evening.

A childhood friend may remember a version of them their children never met.

You don't have to decide which memory is correct.

People knew one another in different places, at different ages, and through different relationships.

A person's story doesn't have to become a single agreed version in order to be preserved.

Keep the differences when they matter.

They may tell us something too.

Preserve what you know, and what you don't

You may not know every detail.

Perhaps you aren't sure when something happened.

Perhaps you don't know why someone made a particular decision.

Perhaps a family story has been repeated for years but nobody knows whether every part of it is true.

Don't fill the gaps simply because you want the story to feel complete.

You can say:

I think this happened around 1975.

This is how I remember it.

Mom always told the story this way.

We don't know exactly why.

Uncertainty doesn't make a memory less worth keeping.

Keep the things that carry a story

Sometimes a person remains present in the things they used.

A handwritten recipe.

A book.

A tool.

A piece of jewellery.

A letter.

A favourite mug.

A watch.

A piece of furniture.

You don't have to keep everything.

But before something disappears, ask whether there is a story attached to it.

If there is, photograph it.

Write down what you know.

Record someone talking about it.

Sometimes preserving the story is enough.

Remember the life before you knew them

The person you knew had a life before you were part of it.

Your mother was once a child.

Your grandfather once had friends whose names you may never have heard.

Your partner had places, experiences and people that belonged to years before you met.

Photographs, letters, relatives and old friends may help you discover those parts.

But you don't need to reconstruct everything.

Knowing that there was more to someone's life than the part you witnessed is itself worth remembering.

Keep the complicated person too

People are rarely simple.

Someone can be generous and difficult.

Funny and stubborn.

Strong in one part of their life and uncertain in another.

Relationships can contain love, disappointment, gratitude, anger, tenderness and things that were never resolved.

You don't have to turn someone into a perfect version of themselves in order to remember them with care.

Nor do you have to include every difficult thing.

Preserving a person doesn't require either idealizing them or judging their entire life.

You can keep what feels honest and yours to tell.

You can only tell the part you knew

This may be one of the most important things to remember.

Loving someone doesn't give us complete knowledge of their life.

You knew them through your relationship with them.

Someone else knew them differently.

There may be experiences they never shared with you.

Private things.

Stories belonging partly to other people.

Things you will never know.

You don't need authority over someone's entire life to preserve your memories of them.

You can tell the part you knew.

Some stories may not be yours to tell

A memory can belong to more than one person.

Something you remember may reveal another person's private experience.

A letter may have been written for one recipient.

A difficult family story may contain someone else's pain as well as your own.

The fact that something happened doesn't automatically mean it needs to be preserved publicly—or preserved at all.

You can keep something private.

You can leave something out.

You can decide you aren't ready.

Care includes knowing when not to tell.

You don't have to preserve everything

There is no complete version you are required to create.

You may have hundreds of memories.

You may have only a handful.

There may be periods of someone's life you know almost nothing about.

That's okay.

The purpose isn't to reconstruct every day they lived.

It is to give somewhere to the things you don't want to disappear.

Let one memory lead to another

Once you begin, something unexpected often happens.

Writing about the kitchen reminds you of Sunday mornings.

Sunday mornings remind you of the music they played.

The music reminds you of a journey.

The journey reminds you of something they said.

You don't need to plan that path.

Follow it.

Sometimes the edges of one memory contain the beginning of another.

Leave room for other people to add theirs

A person's story doesn't have to be written by one person.

Perhaps you remember the family holidays.

Someone else remembers working beside them.

Another person remembers school.

Someone remembers the difficult years.

Someone remembers something wonderfully trivial.

Those memories can sit together without being forced into one voice.

Over time, they may create something no individual person could have created alone:

not the definitive story of someone's life,

but a collection of ways they were known.

Keep something of them

You don't have to preserve an entire life.

You don't have to begin with the most important memory.

You don't have to know what everything meant.

Choose something that still brings the person clearly to mind.

The way they laughed.

Something they made.

A place you went together.

A phrase they always used.

A photograph.

A recording.

A completely ordinary day.

Write it down.

Tell the story.

Ask someone else what they remember.

Give that one piece somewhere to stay.

Then another can come later.

You don't have to preserve an entire life to keep something of a person.