Passed and Present: Keeping Memories of Loved Ones Alive

by Allison Gilbert

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Author: Allison Gilbert

Publisher: Seal Press

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 1580056121
ISBN 13: 978-1580056120

Passed and Present is a one-of-a-kind guide for discovering creative and meaningful ways to keep the memory of loved ones alive. Inspiring and imaginative, this bona fide "how-to” manual teaches us how to remember those we miss most, no matter how long they’ve been gone.

Passed and Present is not about sadness and grievingit is about happiness and remembering. It is possible to look forward, to live a rich and joyful life, while keeping the memory of loved ones alive.

This much-needed, easy-to-use roadmap shares 85 imaginative ways to celebrate and honor family and friends we never want to forget.

Chapter topics include:

Repurpose With Purpose: Ideas for transforming objects and heirlooms. Discover ways to reimagine photographs, jewelry, clothing, letters, recipes virtually any inherited item or memento.

Use Technology: Strategies for your daily, digital life. Opportunities for using computers, scanners, printers, apps, mobile devices, and websites.

Not Just Holidays: Tips for remembrance any time of year, day or night, whenever you feel that pull be it a loved one’s birthday, an anniversary, or just a moment when a memory catches you by surprise.

Monthly Guide: Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and other special times of year present unique challenges and opportunities. This chapter provides exciting ideas for making the most of them while keeping your loved one’s memory alive.

Places to Go: Destinations around the world where reflecting and honoring loved ones is a communal activity. This concept is called Commemorative Travel. Also included are suggestions for incorporating aspects of these foreign traditions into your practices at home.

Being proactive about remembering loved ones has a powerful and unexpected benefit: it can make you happier. The more we incorporate memories into our year-round lives as opposed to sectioning them off to a particular time of yearthe more we can embrace the people who have passed, and all that’s good and fulfilling in our present.

With beautiful illustrations throughout by artist Jennifer Orkin Lewis, Passed and Present includes an introduction by Hope Edelman, bestselling author of Motherless Daughters.

Review

Praise for Allison Gilbert's Passed and Present

"We all want to keep the memories of lost loved ones alive—but how? With tips on everything from transforming heirlooms to marking anniversaries, this lovely book can help."
—People magazine

“Passed and Present isn't a book about grief, it's a celebration of our loved ones and of life itself. Allison Gilbert gives us Forget Me Nots — practical, useful, necessary tips for survivors of loss to preserve our memories and live a joyful life. A must for everyone who has suffered loss, which is everybody."
—Ann Hood, bestselling author of Comfort: A Journey Through Grief

"What a wonderful book! Passed and Present is an invaluable resource, a bona fide primer packed with all the ideas and habits we need for remembering loved ones. This is a book about loss, and also about celebration; about the past, the present, and a future that embraces happiness, the people we miss, and all they still mean to us.”
—Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author of Better Than Before, Happier at Home, and The Happiness Project

"Perhaps no one who experiences a terrible loss needs to learn how to grieve. But perhaps everyone needs to learn how to create a memorial without creating an obsession. Allison Gilbert’s thoughtful book meets a need that most of us might not have even realized was there.”
—Jacquelyn Mitchard, bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean

"Allison Gilbert understands not only the need for remembrance but also the profound power of shared stories and mementoes. In Passed and Present she offers a fresh—and most welcome—approach to salving grief and staying connected after loss."
—Dawn Raffel, bestselling author of The Secret Life of Objects

"We now recognize that grief is not about closure and moving on. In fact, keeping a healthy continuing bond with those we loved and lost is normal-- and helpful. Allison Gilbert's Passed and Present: Keeping Memories of Our Loved Ones Alive offers a wonderful guide for sustaining that bond.”
—Dr. Kenneth Doka, senior consultant at Hospice Foundation of America, and past president of the Association for Death Education and Counseling

“After a loved one dies, nearly all of us are confronted with the same uncertainty—what to do with their belongings, the shirts, pants, jewelry, papers, and all those important and insignificant odds and ends. After my parents died, I could have really used Passed and Present. In this simple and handy book, Allison Gilbert provides surprising opportunities for transforming would-be clutter into cherished keepsakes. This book will do for remembering what Marie Kondo has done for tidying up.”
—Claire Bidwell Smith, bestselling author of After This and The Rules of Inheritance

“Allison Gilbert's Passed and Present poignantly urges us to recognize the importance of staying connected to loved ones who have died. Flying in the face of all the cliches out there about letting go, it wisely counsels us to remember mindfully and lovingly—and offers the tools to do so.
—Meghan O’Rourke, author of The Long Goodbye

“There has never been a book like Passed and Present. Allison’s eloquent and inviting writing style provides readers with practical and meaningful suggestions for maintaining a continuing connection with loved ones. This is a book everyone, including those of us who work professionally with the bereaved, will read and recommend again and again.”
—Fredda Wasserman, clinical director of adult programs and education, OUR HOUSE Grief Support Center

"In a world that urges us to 'move on,' or 'put this behind you,' the bereaved often struggle with a common challenge: how to remember the people they can't imagine living without. With a wide range of creative and compelling suggestions and activities, from food to music and beyond, there's something in Passed and Present for everyone.”
—Donna Schuurman, senior director of advocacy & training, The Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families

"How we remember those we love is as important as what we remember. Allison Gilbert offers creative, resonant ways to keep relationships alive in a positive way with those we love who are no longer here.”
—Rosanne Cash, four-time Grammy award-winning singer/songwriter and daughter of Johnny Cash

"In Passed and Present, Allison Gilbert has given us a remarkable gift. By recognizing a newfound thirst for looking back, she leads us step by step in ways to honor our loved ones and rejoice in our ancestors. This book is necessary and simply wonderful!”
—Benilde Little, bestselling author of Welcome to My Breakdown, Good Hair, and Who Does She Think She Is?

"I’ve been lucky to trace my roots with DNA testing. My ancestors are from Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Congo. I didn’t know these details until recently, and the discovery has driven me to appreciate those I love and those I’ve lost even more. Most people don’t know I lost my father when I was young. I wear his ring all the time. Allison Gilbert’s Passed and Present is an important and timely book. Her creative ideas for remembering arrive at just the right moment in history, guiding millions of us who are yearning to recognize and pay tribute to our past.”
—Don Lemon, anchor of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon

“Passed and Present encourages us to remember in a whole new way. Allison Gilbert’s sensible, no-nonsense approach provides so many fresh ideas that readers will find inspiration on every page.”
—Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train

“I was thirteen years old when my dad died. As his firstborn, I inherited all of his belongings but was clueless how to preserve them. I admit to dumping nearly everything in boxes. Thirty years later, Passed and Present has given me reason to open them and begin anew. Gilbert’s book is so innovative that it blew my mind. It’s more than just making mundane scrapbooks; her novel ideas include using digital technology to bring loved ones into our high tech world. My son will now have a crystal clear image of the grandpa he never knew. Passed and Present is a treasure.”
—Cheryl Wills, anchor, NY 1 News, author of Die Free: A Heroic Family Tale and The Emancipation of Grandpa Sandy Wills

Praise for Allison Gilbert's Always Too Soon

"Each story here eloquently captures the heart of loss. The lessons, forged in sorrow and eventual acceptance, are invaluable and intensely real." —Senator John Kerry

"Take this book and treat it like a friend . . . You will undoubtedly continue to find comfort in the lives, courage, and determination of the people you meet in this book long after you put it down." —Lois F. Akner, author of How to Survive the Loss of a Parent

"Readers . . . will find hope and comfort in these moving stories." —J. William Worden, author of Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy

About the Author

Allison Gilbert is the author of the critically-acclaimed Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents, and its follow-up book, Parentless Parents: How the Loss of Our Mothers and Fathers Impacts the Way We Raise Our Children. She is co-editor of Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11, widely considered the definitive oral history of how broadcast journalists covered that historic day.

Gilbert has been featured many times on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, ABC, and NPR, and her writing on family and parenting, grief and loss, cancer prevention, and genetic testing appears in numerous publications and websites including CNN.com, the New York Times, The Daily Beast, and Huffington Post. An Emmy award-winning journalist, Gilbert started her career in television news, her work honored by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Associated Press, and the Society of Professional Journalists. She lives outside New York City with her husband and two children. Learn more about Allison at allisongilbert.com.

In my experience, one of the most difficult parts of coping with the loss of a loved one is how to manage the years that follow. Most of us receive the immediate help we need – friends attend funerals, relatives pour over photographs and reminisce, colleagues send emails expressing sympathy. But
consider the vacuum that happens later. I’ve never met anyone who’s stopped completely thinking about the person he or she loved, our memories flood in and out and wash over us at anticipated and unexpected times. Yet for the most part, a year after, five years later, 15—the outreach that once provided so much comfort is mostly gone. How odd is it that despite how connected we are today, finding meaningful ways to celebrate those who have passed away can be so hard to do?

The reason it’s often frustrating is because there are so few guidelines to follow. A search on Amazon offers thousands of books on grieving, but hardly anything on concrete steps for remembering. And think about your local bookstore or library. Usually there are two or three shelves devoted to coping
with death, many offering helpful advice and specific guidance for moving on. But when it comes to identifying explicit ways to keep the memory of loved ones alive? I can’t say I’ve come across a satisfying option.

And there’s another explanation why it’s challenging. Mourning generally follows a precise choreography. Between the rituals of burial and the recitation of certain prayers, between the wakes and shiva calls—the bereaved, and those who console them, know their role and take their place. To say it another way, when someone we love dies, we usually benefit from being the passive recipients of support. But when it comes to sustaining connections after loss, that work is up to us.

Not long ago hundreds of people attended the memorial services for my parents. Both times, in those first awful days and weeks that followed, I never had to look far to share a memory or hear one. Conversations were effortless. In some ways, looking back, mourning was made slightly easier because it seemed I’d always have the opportunity to talk about my mom and dad. But a few years after they were gone, that cozy cocoon burst open.

While I no longer needed traditional grief support, I craved a new and different type of advice. How could I recognize their absence without making my family and friends uncomfortable? And what should I do with their belongings, not just the clothing and furniture, but all those pieces of paper–the ticket stubs, the
birth certificates and marriage licenses, the emails and letters they wrote me? In some respects, because strategies like these are seldom discussed, I felt lonelier than when my parents died.

This is the experience of nearly every mourner–not just those who’ve lost a parent. Despite our social media circles, news feeds, and virtual support groups, ensuring those closest to us aren’t forgotten is often an isolating task. And while it feels good to make a donation or run a race in their memory, we
have opportunities to do so much more. What’s become pressing to me is finding and sharing tools for remembering that can be incorporated into anyone’s life, whenever or however suddenly the mood strikes.

Passed and Present: Keeping Memories of Loved Ones Alive

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Passed and Present: Keeping Memories of Loved Ones Alive