How to Write Down the Small Details of Someone You Have Lost

After someone dies, most people expect to forget the wrong things. Not the wedding or the last holiday, which are well photographed and often retold, but the ordinary material. The way they answered the phone. The thing they said every time you left. The exact tone of voice used for complaining about the weather.

Those details go first, and they are usually the ones people miss most. The good news is that they are easy to catch if you start early and keep the method small. You do not need to write a eulogy or a biography. You need a page, a pen and a few minutes now and then.

Why the small things slip away

Big memories get rehearsed. We tell them at the funeral, at the table, to people who never met them. Every retelling fixes them in place. Small details never get told, because nobody thinks to say, "Do you remember how Dad always rattled his keys before he sat down?"

So they stay unrehearsed, and unrehearsed memories fade. It happens quietly, over months. One day you try to hear a particular phrase in their voice and find you can only remember that they used to say something like it.

Big memories get retold. Small ones never do, so they are the first to go.

Start with how they said things

Of all the categories, this one repays the effort most. Write down their turns of phrase, spelled the way they said them. The nickname they used for the neighbour. What they said on the phone when they picked up, and what they said just before they hung up. The sentence they started with when they were about to give advice.

Spell it out phonetically if you need to. You are not writing for an editor. You are writing so that in ten years you can read the line aloud and hear it.

Then the ordinary Tuesday

A useful trick is to stop trying to remember special occasions and describe a boring day instead. What did they eat? What did they watch, and what did they say to the television? How were they in a shop, a queue, a car, a waiting room? What did they complain about, and what were they quietly looking forward to?

An ordinary Tuesday is the thing you can no longer have, which is why it is worth setting down. It is also surprisingly easy to write, because there is no pressure to make it mean something.

Some ways to keep it manageable

• Write one detail at a time. A single line is a complete entry.
• Use their words, not a description of their words.
• Do not tidy. If the memory is unflattering or funny or contradictory, keep it that way.
• Add who else remembers it. A cousin may hold the other half of a story.
• Date nothing if dating is a burden. You can always add it later.
• Stop when it hurts too much, and come back another day.

Do it slowly

Grief is physically tiring, and a project with a deadline is the last thing most people need. A page a week works better than an afternoon of trying to recall everything at once. A question to start from helps too: what would you have told them about this week? What do you still argue with them about? What habit of theirs have you caught yourself keeping?

A journal like this is not a substitute for a doctor, a counsellor or a bereavement service. If you are struggling to get through the day, please talk to one of them. Writing down a phrase is something to do alongside that support, not instead of it.

The book

The Year After is a weekly journal for the first year following a death: 52 weekly questions, each with a full lined page beside it, four read-back pages through the year and a letter at the end. There are pages at the back for exactly the details described here, how they said things and what they were like on an ordinary Tuesday. It is undated and 6 x 9 inches, so you can begin in whichever week you are in.