A beloved family member died this summer, right around the 4th of July holiday, and it made it difficult for arrangements to have a well attended funeral. Instead, a big Celebration of Life party was planned for this fall. Let me share with you from this experience some tips on how to have a great Celebration of Life for your loved one.

All along the way

Take pictures. In this day and age when pictures can be plentiful, take a lot, and share them. Make sure to set aside the best ones, saved in a way that won’t get misplaced or lost due to hard drive failure over the years.

Hold regular reunions. This doesn’t have to be formal, but get together regularly. Document with pictures. Tell everyone when and where the photos will be taken. If you don’t, you’ll end up like one reunion I attended: where 9 of the 10 of my pieces of the family was 1/4 of a mile away, playing in the lake, at photo time. We would happily have dragged ourselves out of the lake or delayed our entry into the lake to participate in the photos, as it was the one reunion close to us in decades, but simply nobody told us. You can’t prevent the airline delays, the weather cancellations, the illness, but communication issues are very preventable.

As the kids become adults

Continue to spend time with your kids. Invite them to come with you on family vacations. Keep your home a welcoming environment, where they can come visit. Help keep your kids relationships with each other strong, by hosting whole family events on a regular basis; how regular depends on your family size, their physical distance from you, and what size of hosting venue you have as your life changes.

As your grandkids become adults

If the adult grandchildren are being responsible with their money, they may not have enough spare cash flow in those early adulting years, childcare years, or paying for college years, to travel across the country and pay for expensive reunion hotels/timeshares and restaurants. Encourage the adult children (who are now in their highest earning years) to pay for the expenses of the adult grandchildren to attend.

Planning the Celebration

Obviously how big a celebration you can throw will depend on how many people will be attending, and how long there is to plan it. If you have a long time, planning ahead will make the celebration go smoother.

Set up and communicate the day(s) and time(s) of any key events, including for a web conference for any family and friends who won’t be able to attend in person.

Gather photos, and the stories that go with them. Don’t add loud music, nobody will be able to share their stories and be heard.

Implementing the Celebration

Have a large screen for everyone present in person to see at once, and then only need one internet link to share the live stream. If you try to have everyone in person and online viewing a photo slide show independently, first they all be out of sync so they can’t enjoy the stories, and second they’ll eat up all of the limited local bandwidth (especially if you’re at a time share or hotel) so that the remote people end up unable to see/participate.

Don’t hold any event where you are coordinating between on-site people, and arriving or remote people, immediately after a meal. Even if you think you’ve left yourself plenty of time to go and eat and return, it will inevitably run late, and your newly arriving people will be left hanging.

After the Celebration

Photo slide shows are great, but they’re going to get lost easily. Document the photos into printed photo albums that can be put on the shelf, and make it easy for anyone who wants one to have one printed and shipped to them. The photo albums should have not just images, but also the remembrances – who, what, when, where, why, how; and stories!

It’s a lot of work

There’s no doubt, hosting a celebration of life is a big lift. The more you can spread around the work, the lighter it will be. But someone still needs to be in charge of the event, checking to make sure each individual’s responsibilities are being met and timelines are moving along, just like a project manager for any other big task.

If you can, give the trustee a break on their contribution of time to planning and implementing this event, as they’ll be having their hands full for months doing the job of trustee.