The conversation that's also a keepsake

There are two different things we want when it comes to the older people in our lives, and we usually treat them as separate.

The first is closeness now — making sure they have company, conversation, the feeling of mattering to someone day to day. The second is permanence — making sure that when they're gone, something of them remains, so we and our children can still reach who they were.

We tend to pursue these in completely different ways. Closeness is phone calls and visits. Permanence is a project we mean to get to: the photo book, the recorded interview, the memoir for "someday." One is warm and ongoing; the other is a chore on a list. And because the chore feels heavy, it usually never happens.

What I've come to love about a real conversation is that it quietly does both jobs at once.

When you sit a parent down and ask them about their life — and actually listen — you're giving them the thing they want most in that moment: attention, interest, the sense of being a person worth hearing. That's the closeness. But the very same conversation, if you keep it, becomes the permanence. The stories that made the afternoon good are the stories your family will want forever. You don't have to choose between spending time with someone and preserving them. The time spent is the preservation, as long as it doesn't evaporate the second it's over.

That last condition is the catch, and it's the one that's always undone good intentions. A wonderful talk that nobody captured is gone by next week. So the trick isn't to add a second, separate "memoir project" on top of staying in touch. It's to make staying in touch leave something behind on its own.

That's the whole design idea behind MemoirTalk. The talking is the point — easy, unhurried, the kind of conversation that's good company in itself. And because it's all being turned into a written record as it happens, the company you give today is the keepsake your family keeps tomorrow. One act, both jobs.

Closeness and permanence were never really two things. We just kept building them separately, and kept finishing only the first. They're the same conversation. You only have to make sure it lasts.

— Jeff

Make the conversation last →