After someone dies, people often hold a funeral or memorial service or celebration of life. Each of these honor the dead but, as one-time events, they lack permanence. Would you consider a printed book as a tribute to a departed loved one?
Advantages
As mentioned above, a book lasts longer than a one-off event. Convenience counts as an advantage, too—you may pick up the book at any time and page through it to remember your loved one. Also, the volume of facts in a book can far exceed the number of anecdotes and memories glossed over at an event, and you need not read the book in one sitting. In addition, you may enjoy a book in solitude, at a time when you may not welcome the presence of others.
Description
Like funerals, tribute books benefit the living. Therefore, if you choose to create one, think of the book’s audience. What would they most want to know about the person being honored? You needn’t approach the task like a biographer—reporting a life story, citing sources, verifying facts, conveying the bad along with the good. Instead, make it your purpose to honor, not just inform.
Did your departed family member write a lot—even letters, recipes, poems, emails, texts? Consider including some of these as appropriate, if they help convey the essence of the person’s life.
These days, we take and save pictures, each worth (as the saying goes) a thousand words. Include the best of these in your tribute book. Explanatory captions should accompany the pictures, with dates and descriptions of each image.
Videos represent a difficulty—how do you include them in a printed book? You could upload videos to a website, assign QR (Quick Response) codes to them, and include the QR codes in your book. Or you can attach, to each copy of the book, a thumb drive with the valued videos saved on it.
Creation
How do you make a tribute book? Various options exist, and your choice may depend on the energy, time, and money you can devote to the effort. You can pay a service to help you by doing the parts of the work you might find difficult. Such services include ModernHeirloomBooks.com, SimplyCelebrate.com, TributeStoryBook.com, ALifeUntold.com, NewlyWords.com, MyStoryFlow.com, and ModernMemoirs.com.
Personal Example
My father died in 2022 at the age of 91. I knew nothing about tribute books then. However, as mentioned in a previous post, he left behind over 800 written vignettes describing his life and thoughts about everything along the way. Rather than having these vignettes wither away in password-protected oblivion inside obscure internet servers, forgotten and unread, I had them printed in book form.
Easy, huh? After all, my dad had written everything. All I had to do was copy, paste, format, and send to the printer.
Not so easy. It took almost two years. I’m proud of the result—a tribute book in two volumes totaling 1410 pages. Rather long for a tribute book—or any book—but Dad wrote all of it except the Foreword. That being the case, the book resembles an autobiography as much as a tribute book. I didn’t hire a service, just formatted the manuscript and had a few copies printed by Lulu.com for my family. I used that site, but you may choose from a variety of others.
Your Tribute Book
Could you create a book as a tribute to a lost loved one? Books endure, and family members, even those yet unborn, could learn about their ancestors. I offer the notion as a suggestion to consider. In deepest sympathy for you on the loss of someone you love, I’m—
Poseidon’s Scribe