Creating a Book of Remembrance

There is a growing movement to create remembrance books that honor the recently deceased. Here are some tips on how to make a great book of remembrance.

Gathering Information

First, go back in your memory of the person and write down everything that comes to mind. You don't necessarily have to go from your earliest memory to your last you can do that kind of organization later. Just let everything flow from you mind onto the page for now. If you have access to his or her living space,use the objects and photo albums to compile as much information as you can about this person's friends, family and favorite hobbies and activities. Write it all down.

As you are looking through the photo albums, pick out a few of the very best photos to include in your book. These photos can help with your writing as well, and can give you some insight on the departed's favorite places and people, which will help you out in your next information-gathering step.

Get in contact with as many of the departed's close friends and family as you can, and conduct interviews or send out email requests for any experiences and stories that they may have had with this person. Most of the time you will find that people are very willing to help, but you may have to push them a little to get them to reply on time. One thing you might want to do is to put together a little questionnaire and send that around. Different people will have different memories, so you will have to go with what you thing best represents the person in question.

You may get some creative responses to your request, such as children drawing a pictures or people writing poems or songs. Do your best to include things like this, as they shoe how much the person was loved.

Organizing

There are several choices here, so don't feel like you have to simply follow the person's life chronologically from beginning to end. If, for instance, the person had a major achievement, you can start there and work backward and forward to create the whole picture. Strive to make the book easy to follow and to read. Using quotes from your sources in the form of an oral history is a great way to do this. This way, you can organize the book into chapters that reflect the various eras in the person's life, and intersperse quotes that relate to these times from the some of the same people in different sections.

Printing and Binding

You will want to print out your pages with a nice digital laser printer at the very least, and may even want to use a four-color process if you want to include a lot of color photographs or artwork. As far as binding you pages into book form, you may be surprised to learn that the kind of machines that create hardcover and softcover books, are extremely affordable and easy to use. Doing the binding yourself can save money in the short run, and you can produce books at a moment's notice if you find that there is the need for more. Take a look around online at these machines (called thermal binding machines) to find one that might work for you.