Their Lives Ended Too Soon — Help Their Families Preserve Their Legacy

When we lose someone, we grieve not only their loss, but the future we thought we’d have with them.

But for many families there is another heartbreak. Their loved ones left behind paintings, music, and writing that meant everything to them. And that work is far more than creative pieces left behind. It is their loved one’s voice, their imagination, and the way they saw the world. For the families who loved them, it is a part of who they were, and that is irreplaceable.

And with that comes a painful question:

What happens to everything they spent their life creating?

Most of the time, it ends up in boxes or on old hard drives and is ultimately lost over time. I didn’t understand how painful that reality was until I lost my son in 2017.

My son, Ethan, struggled with addiction for over a decade, but what people didn’t know was that he wrote constantly, and more than anything else, he wanted to be a writer. A month before he passed, he had started writing a book about his life. He wanted to share his story to prevent others from going down the same road he did. But he never got a chance to finish his story.

After he died, I discovered his journals, song lyrics, and the beginning of that novel. I was left with a haunting thought:

What if one day his words disappeared as if he had never existed?

After speaking with others, I realized I wasn’t alone. More families than I ever imagined were left with their loved ones’ creative works and no one seemed to know what to do with it all. Again and again I heard the same question from grieving families trying to figure out what to do with the work their loved ones left behind.

Artists like Julius Trombino, a gifted singer-songwriter whose life ended from a sudden overdose just days before his 23rd birthday. Julius left behind a remarkable catalog of songs and had already begun emerging in the music scene, even opening for the Jonas Brothers early in his career.

Or Angelique Benrahou, a talented young portrait artist whose work captured the depth of the human spirit. She also illustrated a children’s book written with her mother. Angelique struggled with bipolar disorder, and her artistic voice was only beginning to gain recognition when her life ended far too soon.

That is why I created The Artist Lives. I know firsthand that when you’re grieving a loved one, all you want is for the world to remember them. That their voice mattered.

The Artist Lives gives families a place where their loved one’s work and story can live on. Our online platform provides individual artist pages that showcase their work along with their story.

For those families who lost someone to addiction, suicide, or AIDS, this is especially meaningful. Because when a life ends this way, the world often focuses on how they died, not how they lived and what they gave to the world. Preserving their creative work allows their families to ensure their loved one is remembered for their talent and who they were as a person.

But our work cannot continue without support.

Your donation helps us build and maintain the digital archive, work directly with families to document their loved one’s story, and ensure that the artwork, music, and writing they left behind are not lost.

And there is so much more we can do.

With the resources to grow, we can hold exhibitions that bring their work into the world, share their music on streaming platforms, and introduce their writing to publishers so it has the chance to reach new readers. Most importantly, we can give families the comfort of knowing the work their loved one devoted their life to creating will continue to be seen, heard, and remembered.

Because when someone dies, the work they leave behind becomes part of how their life continues to exist. And no lifetime of creativity should disappear as if it meant nothing.

Their Lives Ended Too Soon—Help Their Families Preserve Their Legacy.

By Artist Lives

Their Lives Ended Too Soon—Help Their Families Preserve Their Legacy.

When someone dies, the work they spent their life creating often disappears with them. We help families make sure it doesn’t.