Portia Lockett

Did you ever notice when someone you love dies you automatically become the unofficial guardian of their memory.

Nobody asks us to do it. There isn't a meeting, a vote, or a certificate that arrives in the mail.

Yet somehow we begin feeling responsible for making sure our person is remembered in the right way. Because we worry that if we don't talk about them enough, share their stories, celebrate their birthdays, or keep their traditions alive, they might slowly fade from the minds of the people around us.

I remember feeling this way after my loss. It wasn't enough that I was grieving my person, but I also felt responsible for making sure everyone else remembered them too. If an important date passed without anyone mentioning it, I noticed. If people stopped talking about them, I noticed that too.

The problem is that grief already demands so much from us. We're trying to survive heartbreak, loneliness, anxiety, exhaustion, and all the practical challenges that come with rebuilding a life we never wanted to rebuild.

Adding the responsibility of preserving another person's entire legacy on top of that can be exhausting.

But many of us carry the belief that if we don't remember every detail, save every photograph, and tell every story, we're somehow failing the person we loved.

Here’s the thing…that's a standard none of us can possibly meet.

Even when our loved ones were alive, we didn't remember every conversation we had with them or every single day we spent together. We loved them without documenting every moment. Yet after they die, we all of a sudden expect ourselves to become historians and archivists.

I believe that keeping someone's memory alive isn't really about remembering everything. It's about carrying forward the things that mattered the most. It's found in the lessons they taught us, the values they passed along, the traditions we continue, and the ways they've shaped who we are.

Their influence still shows up in so many ways.

The people we love don't continue living in our hearts because we become perfect keepers of their memory. They live on because they changed us. Their fingerprints remain on our lives long after they're gone.

And every life they touched…becomes part of the legacy they leave behind.

Gary Sturgis
Author of: ‘SURVIVING GRIEF – 365 Days A Year’