After a diagnosis
After a serious diagnosis, recording is not the first task and does not need to be done this week. When you get to it, record the voice first, then the facts, then the stories. Most of what matters costs nothing, and this MemoriesBox page has no buy button.
Facts on this page verified
This is not the first thing to do
A letter came, or somebody said a word in a room with a box of tissues in it, and the last few days have gone into phone calls, appointment times, insurance, and telling people.
Recording anything is not urgent this week. It will feel like it is, because it is the one item on the list that looks like it could be done, and because doing something is easier than sitting still. The first week is for medical decisions and for the family absorbing the news, and a project started in the middle of that tends to be abandoned by the second session.
What is worth doing this week is one small thing: stop deleting the voicemails. How to save a voicemail forever has the steps for iPhone and Android and takes about ten minutes. Everything else on this page can wait a fortnight, and will be better for it.
What to record, in what order
When you do get to it, the order matters more than the equipment. It is the order that produces the most irreplaceable material first.
| Order | What | Why it comes here | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The voice doing ordinary things: names, a greeting, the way they answer the phone, a blessing | It cannot be reconstructed from anything else, and it is what people play again | 5 minutes |
| 2 | The proper nouns: villages, streets, ships, employers, maiden names, dates of arrival | Facts become unrecoverable. Everything else can be approximated | 15 minutes |
| 3 | The story they always tell | The most fluent thing they will say, and the one the grandchildren will ask for | 15 minutes |
| 4 | A short message to each person, by name | One or two sentences each. People ask for this | 10 minutes |
| 5 | Childhood, then leaving home, then work, then the people they lost | The life story. Months of short sessions, not an afternoon | Ongoing |
The longer version, with nothing to buy on it, is what to record when there isn't much time. For step five, the first twenty minutes sets out the sequence.
53% of people in the UK learned something new about a family member only after that person had died, and 43% of them found it while clearing out the house (Ancestry.co.uk, November 2022, n=2,000). Steps one and two above are the cheapest available insurance against being in that 43%.
How to ask, when everybody knows why you are asking
The difficulty is not that they will refuse. It is that any request to record now carries a subtext neither of you wants to say out loud. Some things that help.
- Give a reason that points at other people. "I want the children to have you telling this" is about the children. "While we still can" makes them responsible for managing your feelings about their diagnosis.
- Ask for one thing, not for their life. One story, one afternoon. The scale of the request is what makes it feel like a summing-up.
- Do not start with the illness. It will come up, at a moment they choose. If it does, stop asking questions and let it be said.
- Let them be unresolved. An account in which everybody was wonderful is less true, and less useful to whoever hears it later.
- Say what happens to it. Being recorded is much easier when the audience is defined.
If they say no, take the no, and go back to step one on your own. Saved voicemails, recorded calls with permission, and a written page of names are a real archive and require nobody's agreement. How to record someone who doesn't want to be recorded covers the middle ground.
If you are the person who was diagnosed
Some of the people reading this are not the family. If that is you, three things.
You are allowed to not do this. The pressure to produce something for everyone else is real and it is not an obligation.
If you do want to, you decide everything: what is recorded, what is deleted, who is allowed to hear it, and whether any of it is sealed until after you have gone. Nobody gets access by default, including your children, and including us.
And you are allowed to say the unresolved things. Recordings made to be comforting are usually the ones nobody plays twice. The page for the person doing the remembering is addressed to you rather than to whoever is organising this.
What actually happens if you use MemoriesBox
Someone sets up an account, which takes about ten minutes and is nearly always done by the family rather than the person being recorded. A session is one spoken question, an answer, and a follow-up based on what was said. Twenty minutes is normal and stopping early is normal too. There is no schedule to fall behind on, no progress bar and no reminder emails, because we do not send re-engagement notifications to people in this situation, or to anyone.
After about 30 minutes of recordings a voice model can be built. What that produces is a recording that can be asked questions and answers in that voice, using what was actually said. It does not invent opinions the person never expressed, it states that it is an AI every time it is used, and it is not the person. Building it is a separate decision from recording and can be deferred indefinitely.
Everything sits in the European Union and can be exported at any time. What happens to your recordings if MemoriesBox shuts down is worth reading before you put anyone's voice anywhere, including here.
If they won't use a phone or a computer
Some people have a phone that makes calls and nothing else, and this is not the moment to introduce new technology to anybody.
There is a device being built for that: a box that speaks a question aloud in the room and records the answer, with no phone, no app and no account. It is $79 one-time and it ships in 2027, so it does not help this year. The practical answers today are recorded phone calls, a handheld voice recorder, or someone else doing the arranging, all of which are on for a parent who doesn't use a smartphone.
What it costs, if you get that far
A subscription is $139 a year with the first 14 days free, and it can be cancelled at any time. In situations like this, families quite often record what they need inside the free fortnight and never pay us anything. If it would be easier to have it handled by a person, VIP Setup is $299 one-time and VIP Complete is from $790 for three to four guided conversations.
If you want a person rather than a website, write to hello@memoriesbox.org. You do not need to be a customer to ask.
Questions people ask
Should we start recording straight after a diagnosis?
Not in the first week. Save the voicemails, and leave the rest for a fortnight. Projects begun in the middle of the initial shock tend to stop after one session.
How do I ask without making it about dying?
Give a reason that points at other people, ask for one story rather than for their life, and do not open with the illness. If they raise it themselves, stop asking questions and let it be said.
What if they refuse?
Take the no. You can still save voicemails, record ordinary calls with permission, and write down the names, dates and places. That is a real archive and it does not need their agreement to a project.
Can the recordings be kept private until afterwards?
Yes. The person recorded decides who can hear what, and can seal parts of it. Nobody has access by default, including family members and including us.
Is any of this a treatment, or good for them medically?
No, and we make no medical or therapeutic claim. This is a recording, made because people want the voice afterwards. If a clinician has recommended life-story work, they are the right person to say what it is for.
Related: When there isn't much time · When the details are starting to go · What to record when there isn't much time · All occasions
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