In memoriam.

My dad passed from Alzheimer’s in June 2021, and while it was painful in its own way, what stood out most starkly was seeing first hand how we remember ourselves and how we remember others. 

His funeral was held at the Catholic church he’d attended. It was expectedly small, but it still felt like no one was there; it felt like no one remembered him. Surely he’d made a larger impact.

Later on, when my step mother revealed what was left of his belongings, it didn’t seem like he had remembered anyone either – before or after the disease. He was a teacher, a coach, a father, a husband with really nothing left of himself or of others. 74 years of life, leaving in its wake a few rings, some Christmas ornaments, and some clothes. 

I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t more – there weren't more people to remember him; there weren’t more pieces of other people from his life. 

It wasn’t his fault though. Memories are hard to hold onto with our minds alone. We try to cheat, and we give ourselves physical mnemonics to help us in the form of the things we save. We save visual, aural, olfactory, and tactile reminders to catalyze our memories. However, the number of objects that remind us of people can become overwhelming, taking up space in our lives, requiring us to purge them. We’re forced by the limitations of the space in our physical lives to get rid of these objects, but in doing so, we are deciding whom to forget. 

I am bad at trying to purge these physical memories. 

I clutch and hold onto pieces of people and pieces of my life, stored in small shoe boxes scattered around our house and garage. These corrugated containers are a physical backup and tangible evidence of a life lived. This hoard of memory boxes I hold more dearly than before because of the looming genetic threat of losing my ability to recall the associated events and people. 

The funeral cemented for me that not only did I need a way to store these memories, but that I also needed a way to share them. I came back and began to catalog what I had, opening boxes and taking photos of the items inside, digitally collecting the pieces of others’ lives that I’d saved in memoriam.

Then I began to share these captured objects with the people they represented. I shared songs, letters, plane tickets, clothing, and more via emails and texts. I shared because I thought that these saved items would bring joy to the people in my life. I shared because maybe these items would pull feelings and thoughts out from the periphery beyond the edge of memory. I shared to help them understand that something they thought was an idle conversation or a mundane interaction was still held by me as significant. 

The process was important because it felt essential for me to let people know that they mattered, that they made an impact, that they were thought of often and fondly, and that efforts were made to preserve their memory.

There must be a better way. 

This was the inception of Facet. After spending time trying to catalog all these memories of people, I really wanted a better way to do it. I had tried Facebook, Instagram, Google Photos, and just a Dropbox folder. There wasn’t anything that let me share the memories and document them on a timeline that was easily viewable and searchable. I didn't just want to share a photo, I wanted to be able to tag that photo at a certain time or period and then be able to view the connectivity between me and another person. There wasn’t anything that made it easy; there were bad or compromised solutions, but there wasn’t anything that did what I wanted the way that I wanted to do it.  

The initial concept that flowed from the desire to share and the frustration with the current tools was to create an app that would let me and others catalog their memories (photos, objects, chats, songs, emails, etc.) and then put them into a linked timeline. The process went from sketches, renders, prototypes, and now this Beta App that I’m asking for help with. I shared this process with a few of you reading this, and I can’t thank you enough for your initial thoughts and feedback.

Facet was created because we all carry memories of each other that no one else has access to. We have fragments of friends, family, loved ones, and even distant acquaintances that could be combined with other memories to build a more holistic view of a person. These memories are usually hidden away, spread across hundreds of people, persisting, while the ones we remember may live unknowing of this enduring influence. 

Facet was built to assemble and share these pieces on the timeline of our lives. It’s a place to share the music, photos, objects, quotes, locations, and more that we associate with the people who, even through distance and time, we still preserve and celebrate. And, in sharing the pieces of others that we carry with us, we communicate the lasting impacts they’ve had.

Fame shouldn’t be dependent on wealth / notoriety

Beyond sharing with people from past, I also wanted people in my future (my son, daughter, more) to be able to know me. Current methods are restrictive. My kids can only know the me I am as they’re growing up — when they’re 40, they’ll be able to know me at 80, but they can’t know the 40 year old me when they’re 40. I wanted a way to communicate with them in the future who I am today — to be able to share my thoughts, struggles, joys, so that when they’re old enough, they can see me at their age and know me. I want my 40 year old son to get to know his 40 year old father with all my faults, fears, loves, and passions and maybe feel better about or comfortable in with own. This level of communication and documentation is usually restricted for the famous, and, to be blunt, fuck that.

Fame shouldn’t be dependent on wealth / notoriety. Being remembered isn’t a problem with scarcity any longer. Being remembered is no longer dictated by whether your memory is worth the paper someone has to write you on. Data/storage is relatively free and expansive; we should be able to know people not just by what they post of themselves but also what pieces of people that are carried by others; preserved for viewing or looking at a later date without the hurdles of current social platforms. 

 There's no reason that 100 years from now, my great, great, granddaughter shouldn't be able to look me up and learn about me. She wouldn't need to look at pictures of other people and places to get an "idea" of what 2021 was like; she should be able to know that on Feb 11th at 1am PT, her great, great grandfather was sitting in his office in Manhattan Beach, CA, listening to "More Than This", by Peter Gabriel as he wrote this letter. My grandson's granddaughter should be able to see the house and room it was written in, maybe get a sense for the lighting and the mood; maybe even eventually see that I keep repeating the song from 2:50 to 5:15 mark because those bits give me frisson -- literal chills. And from this she should be able to untangle the threads of who I was, who you were, and maybe who we were to each other, being able to gaze backwards on our timeline all the way to when we first met. There is something beautiful in there.

Us

And this is where the idea of Facet becomes powerful. It’s a collection of memories about a person that lets us rebuild them. It’s the ability to see someone not just how you knew them but also eventually how others knew them. While the current iteration of Facet doesn’t let you look at others’ timelines, I eventually want these to be shareable. A good friend passed on this statement after hearing the idea.

“In 100 years, we may eventually be the collection of other people's memories, placed into position on a timeline where future generations can look at them and, by reconstruction, maybe know you, me, and us better.”

And there’s something beautiful about this kind of preservation. Acts of kindness stretched out and remembered across a lifetime, communicated and cataloged for future generations to view.

You

I know you’re busy with life, work, kids, and pressures and deadlines that never seem to let up. I know you have an inundating amount of social apps around you as well; however, I would very much appreciate it if you’d take the time to use Facet, even if just to make a few posts to let me know what you think. It would be even better if you found it useful and began to share memories with others besides me by adding them and inviting them to the app. I believe in the concept of this, but I need some help refining it, and I’d appreciate your insight.