“Death steals everything except our stories,” wrote the poet Jim Harrison. If we aren’t careful, death can steal those, too.

When it comes to money and real estate, most of us make careful arrangements for what will happen after we die. Why not take equal care of our stories, which can’t be retrieved once lost?

Think of the stories you’ve heard your partner or parents tell a thousand times. They are precious. When someone dies, we need those stories—not in a vague, half-remembered, secondhand form but in the original version, with all the plot twists, nuances and personal storytelling quirks. Your own words and insights are more illuminating than others’ eulogies and tributes.

Preserve your stories now, while the memories are vivid. The best stories show not just what you have done but why and how. Starting points include how you got on a career path; what you are trying to do with your life and how it is working out; your biggest triumphs and failures, and what you have learned from them. Also worthwhile: the oddest, funniest, most wonderful and awful things that have happened to you.

“Putting things into words helps to organize them in your mind,” says James W. Pennebaker, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Every now and then, we all need to stand back and take stock and think: What am I doing, where am I going, and is this the life I want?”

You could write a memoir or your own obituary—I highly recommend it—but that isn’t necessary. It is good enough to write a rough draft of your best stories or record them. 

One way to save a memory is to write a letter or an email to a friend and save a copy. Another is to annotate your favorite photos with the stories behind them. For those who need prompts, software such as Storyworth or MemLife provides a template with questions and the option to create a book.

For those who hate to write, voice recording works. Be sure to make a transcript, though, and add notes explaining anything that might be unclear to readers decades from now.

Michael K. Reilly, who died in 2021 at the age of 88, prospered in the coal industry but was never going to be famous. He didn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Still, Mr. Reilly believed his grandchildren might like to know a few things about his life. In retirement, he finally wrote down his memories.

Mark Reilly says he treasures the booklet ‘A Wonderful Life,’ in which his late father Michael K. Reilly wrote down his memories.

Photo: Jeanne Reilly

He called his booklet “A Wonderful Life” and had a printer run off copies for a few dozen family members. The organization and graphics were amateurish, but Mr. Reilly wasn’t trying to dazzle anyone.

As a teenager, Mr. Reilly took his grandmother’s car for a joy ride one night, stole some gasoline and ended up in jail briefly. A few years later, after Maralyn Lyman began dating him, she was shocked when he “gave her up for penance” during the Advent season. Somehow the romance survived. They married in 1958.

One of his sons, Mark Reilly, cherishes the booklet partly for its lack of polish and pretense. “It’s a real story about a real life,” he says.

One caution: Revealing too much about certain topics could hurt or offend loved ones. Life-story writers need to think carefully about what to leave out. Mort Crim, a retired television news anchor, wondered how his children would react to a mention of long-past marital problems when he wrote his story a few years ago. He asked for their guidance, and they urged him to be frank. My advice is to admit mistakes without incriminating others.

Davida Coady also told her story, and thank goodness for that because no one else could have done it nearly so well. Dr. Coady, who died in 2018 at the age of 80, was a physician trained at Columbia University and Harvard. She spent more than two decades shuttling from “one human disaster to another,” as she put it, providing medical care in Africa, Asia and Central America. Meanwhile, her private life was turning into another kind of disaster.

In her memoir, late Davida Coady describes how she careened from ‘one human disaster to another’ for more than 20 years.

Photo: Coady Family

“My pattern was to get drunk and get seduced. I’d sleep with a guy and then get attached to him,” she wrote in her memoir, “The Greatest Good.” Finally, she faced up to her addiction to alcohol and sought help from Alcoholics Anonymous. Her last alcoholic drink, she wrote, was on Oct. 30, 1989.

If written by someone else after her death, Dr. Coady’s life story might have noted in passing that during her travels she met Henry Kissinger, Fidel Castro and Mother Teresa. Because Dr. Coady wrote her own story, we know more. Mr. Kissinger mixed her a gin and tonic. Mother Teresa held her hand while they conversed. Mr. Castro kissed her on the cheek; his beard was surprisingly soft. Her first-person account is detailed and inspiring in ways no one else could match.

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For life-story tellers, there is a bonus. Writing or recording those stories often makes people feel better about themselves and might even improve their health, according to some researchers who study the way people explain their experiences.

Some people have little or no interest in the past, including their own. If you have tried telling your tale and find it brings only sorrow, there is no need to persist.  

Many of us, however, want to cheat death by leaving a mark, however faint. We tend to believe the proverb that people die twice: the first time when their heart stops beating, the second when someone speaks their name, or thinks of them, for the last time.

It isn’t just about you, though. Your stories could be the best gift you ever give to your friends and family.

Even if no one reads or listens to your tale, you haven’t wasted your time. Reviewing your life—what you’re trying to do, why and how it is panning out—might give you the inspiration to mend some of your ways. It isn’t too late to improve the narrative.

James R. Hagerty is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. This essay is adapted from his new book, “Yours Truly: An Obituary Writer’s Guide to Telling Your Story,” which will be published by Kensington’s Citadel Press on Dec. 27.

Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com