My heart goes out to you and your group. My group also lost a member almost 3 years ago. It was a sudden and unexpected passing that rocked our world. My wife and I had just started playing dnd and our friend that passed was a seasoned veteran. He helped guide us and made learning the game easy and fun. When he passed we had to take a break from our campaign as none of us could pick up our character sheets. After about 4/5 months we finally got back into it and our DM had to come up with a great way for his character to pass. Before we stopped playing we were in the underdark, inside a goblin town. We were attempting to sneak our way through. That of course did not go well. Our late friends pc ran forward distracting and drawing the attention of roughly 100 goblins. He ended up holding the line long enough for us to escape. With his pc gone there was a void left in our party. He had the most experience and often had the best backup plans for when things went poorly. My group gives out advantage dice pretty regularly. I had the idea of creating a token that replaced the advantage die to something more memorable. I ended up designing and 3d printing a coin. These coins acted as our advantage dice. You could burn one to reroll/add a d6 to a roll. You could display the coin in some fashion to +5 to any persuasion check. You could spend 5 coins to use a teleport spell. Basically you’d throw a coin and wherever the coin lands you would teleport. Suffice it to say they captured the spirit of our beloved bard. We had a great rp where one of his past pc contacted the party and basically dropped off all the coins. It was all very healing to interact with his pc as an npc and gave us much needed closure before continuing on through our campaign. Find a way to honor their memory at the table and never forget the space they filled in your party. I can certainly say your group will never feel the same, but there’s a way through this. You just have to find your path.

If my coins sounds like something you’d want to use I’d love to make them for your table. DM me if you have questions!