Life Stories Preserved

We recently came across a service called Life Stories Preserved (lifestoriespreserved.net) which we would like to share with you.

As the title suggests, the aim of this service is to preserve and perpetuate the lives and their meaning of people after they have left this good earth. What prompted your writer to share more about this service was the loss of my father this year at the age of ninety-one. I wrote and gave a fifteen minute or so eulogy. It didn’t do justice to the man or his legacy. Not because it was inadequate, but because the vehicle, the eulogy, is inadequate to sum up a life so well lived such as his.

An old African proverb cited on the website says “When an elder dies, it is like a library has burned to the ground”. How much richer would the lives of his grandchildren, great-grandchildren and so on, be had they known more about where they came from and what their forebearers have stood for and overcome. Your writer firmly believes ancestral stories can raise pride and self-esteem and make the lives of our loved ones, and of those in the future, deeper and more meaningful. Everybody wants to be someone from somewhere.

By interviewing family, friends, co-workers and business associates, this service weaves a tapestry of one’s life in about twenty pages, often together with photos and documents. For the more ambitious, full-length books may be commissioned.

While these life stories are usually created during the subject’s lifetime, they may also be done post-mortem. The focus may be as wide, such as a whole life, or as narrow as one would like, such as a period of one’s life (for example, childhood) or a specific area (such as one’s professional career).

Everyone has a fascinating story to tell but not everyone has the means, the inclination or the ability to tell it. The website states it succinctly “Sharing your or a loved one’s life story and preserving family history and lore creates an invaluable legacy for future generations”.