The Living Memories Project: Legacies That Last

by Meryl Ain, Arthur M. Fischman and Stewart Ain

Preserving Memories By Story Telling
There are many ways to remember loved ones and celebrate their lives. The passing down of family recipes, stories and history in modern times remains important for both cultural and legacy reasons, along with helping to cope with loss. Finding appropriate tools and resources for organizing, documenting and sharing is important. The Living Memories Project is devoted to teaching fundamentals.

The Living Memories Project features more than 30 interviews with celebrities and others who tell how they transformed their grief into constructive and creative action. This upbeat and uplifting book demonstrates that any tribute -- big or small -- can be a meaningful way to preserve memories of loved ones. Each chapter offers a rich first-person history that will provide comfort and inspiration to anyone who has experienced a loss. Not everyone can create a foundation, fund an orchestra or make a documentary film, but the authors' hope is that readers will find inspiration from the wide range of actions they read about.

Sooner or later – if we live long enough – we will suffer the loss of a loved one. Be it a parent, a spouse, a favorite cousin or an old friend, we will feel a painful emptiness where once there was something tangible and pleasurable. Sometimes that emptiness simply does not go away. “Prolonged grief disorder” – grief that lasts at least six months after a death – may affect more than a million people annually (New York Times – 9/29/09). The loss of a key family member is an event that may threaten both the individual mourner’s worldview and the fabric of the family. That may be why books about death and mourning continue to proliferate.

Honor & Commemorate: Remembrance
What was noticeably missing from the extensive body of literature relating to death and mourning was a book with a positive outlook, describing how people can go on with their lives when the “official” mourning period ends. The authors' use their own losses and firsthand experience with how difficult it can be to continue living – positively and successfully – with a giant void in one’s life. For them, the key to moving beyond grief and mourning rests in the effort to draw upon their loved ones’ love and strength and to incorporate – mentally, emotionally and meaningfully – their memories into everyday lives.

The authors undertook the writing of this book as a way of learning and sharing how others have kept alive, in both practical and spiritual ways, their loved ones’ strength and inspiration.