When I think about my past, I am often filled with strong feelings of guilt or gratitude.  I can't help but echo those sentiments to the people who are involved, saying either "sorry" or "thank you".  It is not only a form of coping but also a way of honoring those memories.

Though it's important to not get "stuck" on the past, it is perhaps equally important to express one's feelings toward what has happened on their road to the present.  There was a video that I saw a number of years back about happiness and mindfulness/gratitude where people were asked to pick someone very important to them and write out why this person was so important.  The twist is that they then hand a phone to the subject and tell them to read their letter out loud to the person they wrote about.  You can sort of intuit what happens next, of course.  I think that is a sort of thing that I value -- the expression of these feelings.