The anniversary of a loss is its own moment, different from the funeral. A year, five years, twenty years later — the grief has changed shape. A custom song for an anniversary holds where the family IS NOW in relation to the person who is gone, not just where they were when the loss happened.
What this kind of song holds
Anniversary songs hold the long horizon. They hold the version of you that survived the year, the version of them that survived in your memory, and the changing relationship between those two versions. The best ones let TIME be the second character in the song.
What to put in the intake
Tell us how many years it has been. Tell us what has changed. Tell us what you still do that they would recognize. Tell us what you wish they could see. The song lives at the intersection of who you were then and who you are now.