How to Help Your Parents Create a Lasting Legacy

Quick summary

To help your parents recognize and understand their legacy, consider a family legacy project. A legacy project will help your parents celebrate their lives and memories -- and allow you to share in the experience.

Even a frail or mentally impaired parent can participate on some level and will likely appreciate the result, whether it's a poster, a family recipe book, or a celebration in the park. A legacy project will also give you and your children -- and your children's children, for that matter -- a memento of your parents' lives that will live on after they're gone.

There are countless ways to create a legacy project. The approach you choose will depend on factors like the talents and interests of you and your parents, your family history and culture, and your parents' health. Make it a multigenerational effort by recruiting children and grandchildren to participate. The final results may be large or modest, depending on everyone's time and inclinations, and the materials can range from photos and glue sticks to fabric and thread. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Kick off an ongoing photo project

Create a poster or a memory book that documents your parents' life passages, and keep it up to date with recent photos of grandchildren, graduation parties, and family trips. Your parents may enjoy going through the photos with you and helping you write captions.

Create a memoir or an oral history

Many senior centers and assisted living facilities now offer classes on memoir writing for seniors. If you can't find a class or your parents don't want to write their own story, encourage them to talk to you with a tape recorder running. Ask about their childhood, their experience during the war, their memories of their own parents. Talk to other family members to flesh out the family history and create an annotated family tree. Type up the results and include photos and illustrations.

Encourage a work-related legacy project

If your parents' professional accomplishments are an important part of their legacy, help them maintain their connections to their life's work. Encourage your parents to subscribe to journals in their area of expertise or to serve as a mentor for a young colleague, if they're up to it. Keep an eye out for articles and books that might interest them. If your parents have written books or papers or created pieces of art, make sure their life's work isn't just gathering dust in a box somewhere. Instead, create a special shelf to hold the books and papers or devote a wall to the paintings.

Lend a hand for a crafts project

If crafts have played a major role in your parents' lives, help create a craft-based legacy project. You may want to work together on a quilt or crocheted blanket, for example. If they aren't up to participating, let them choose patterns and colors and show them the work in progress when you visit.

If your parents have collected a lifetime's worth of rocks or coins, encourage them to show their treasures to their grandchildren. You might want to put the collection on display on a special shelf in their home or yours.

If meals and cooking have always played a strong role in your family culture, consider putting together a collection of some favorite recipes: the caramel sauce your grandmother always made for Sunday dinner, for instance, or your father's special French toast. Ask other family members to contribute their own favorite recipes. Your children can illustrate the final product.

Encourage them to do volunteer work

The older generation often feels a strong impulse to give back to their community and gets great satisfaction from reaching out to others. If your parents are up to it, you can help them find volunteer work that will help give their lives structure and meaning. Volunteering an hour a week as a history tutor, for example, or calling on a disabled person living alone will help an elderly parent feel useful while enriching another life in the process.

Embrace family reunions and celebrations

Be sure to celebrate life passages like anniversaries, birthdays, and graduations. Consider a family trip, if your parents can do it. They'll also enjoy a family picnic with balloons and homemade cards, even if it has to take place in the nursing home cafeteria. Create a photo album or colorful poster to commemorate the event.