Why is it Important to Keep Remembering the Departed?

17 Oct 2022

Aside from mourning our departed loved ones, it’s important to keep remembering them because we’re: 

  • Honouring them 
  • Learning about their story and our own 
  • Gaining wisdom and learning more about mistakes 
  • Seeking justice and remembering why 
  • Contemplating our own mortality 
  • Finding encouragement 
  • Finding and better appreciating life 

Mourning, honouring and learning 

Remembering our loved ones who passed away can instantly bring tears to our eyes. Also, it can make us smile especially when we remember a funny moment or a deed that has made us thankful for what we have right now (such as a house, some wealth or a happy memory to be cherished). 

Remembering the departed can also be a way to honour them and demonstrate our respect, despite them being in another place we can’t yet reach. Aside from the happy memory and gratitude, we can also feel that deep respect not just because of a great deed or accomplishment by our departed loved one, but also because of how they became a huge part of our lives. 

Reminding ourselves of how they became a part of our lives can also lead us to some valuable lessons and insights. As we remind ourselves of their story, we can find bits and pieces of wisdom that they have unintentionally passed on to us. Whether it’s about making a mistake or making the right choice, we can extract the lessons when we look back to how they’ve lived and touched our lives. 

Encouragement and better appreciation of life 

When we think about death, we better realise and feel that life has an ending and the moments are just fleeting. When we’re young and healthy (and we see that death only happens to other people we don’t know), we might be paying minimal attention to the prospect of death. 

But as we get older and we witness more deaths within our circle of family, friends and acquaintances, we better realise and feel that death is inevitable. It happens to people we know and soon enough, it will also happen to us. 

With this realisation, we can develop a better sense of appreciation about the time we have right now. Recently we might have been buried in worries and stress and thinking more and more that life has no meaning and it’s just full of suffering. But as we think more about death and the memory of our departed loved ones, we can find a glimmer of hope and feel a sense of gratitude about what life brings us.