Why Aftir Exists

When I was young, my grandfather was one of the most important people in my life.

My fondest childhood memories are of the two of us at our family cottage on Diamond Lake. He spent time with me, taught me things, and helped shape who I would become. Then he became sick.

The adults around me believed they were protecting me. They decided I was too young to see him during his final days.

I never got the chance to say goodbye.

I never got the chance to ask questions.

And I have spent much of my life wondering whether there was anything he wanted to say to me that I never got to hear.

That feeling never completely left me.

Years later, as a cancer survivor, I experienced a health scare that forced me to confront a possibility I thought I had already left behind.

The symptoms felt frighteningly familiar. During the weeks it took to schedule appointments, undergo testing, and receive answers, I became convinced that my cancer had returned.

This time, I was not worried about being a child losing someone important.

I was worried about the people I might leave behind.

My daughter was raising my grandchildren on her own. At the time, they were five and seven years old.

An unexpected thought kept returning to me.

I had been six years old when my grandfather died. My grandchildren were now almost exactly the ages I had been when I lost one of the most important people in my life.

Adding to that feeling was another realization that was difficult to ignore: I was now the same age my grandfather had been when he passed away.

Whether rational or not, those parallels made the possibility feel very real.

I could not stop thinking about all the moments I might miss.

Birthdays.

Graduations.

First jobs.

The challenges they would face as teenagers and young adults.

The advice I might never get the chance to give.

The encouragement I might never get the chance to offer.

So I started recording videos.

Some were birthday messages for future years.

Some contained advice for different stages of life.

Some were family stories.

One was recorded at our family cottage, where I shared stories about relatives who had passed away before my grandchildren were born and explained why that place meant so much to our family.

I wanted them to know those stories.

I wanted them to know those people.

I wanted them to hear my voice.

I wanted them to know the people who came before them, even the ones they would never have the chance to meet.

While recording those videos, another thought began to form.

If I felt this way, surely other people did too.

Parents.

Grandparents.

Veterans.

Cancer patients.

People facing serious illness.

Anyone who had ever worried about leaving too soon.

But I also realized there was a problem.

I was depending on someone else to store those videos and deliver them someday.

What if those files were lost?

What if technology changed?

What if the person responsible for sharing them was no longer around?

What if nobody even remembered they existed?

The more I thought about it, the more I felt there should be a better way.

Not just for videos.

For stories.

For photographs.

For memories.

For family history.

For the connections that help future generations understand where they came from.

The idea grew quickly.

I imagined a place where lives could remain connected instead of becoming isolated records.

A place where future generations could immediately understand how people were related, what roles they played in one another's lives, and why they mattered.

A place where stories could continue moving forward rather than slowly disappearing over time.

A place where people could preserve not only who they were, but the wisdom, experiences, memories, and relationships that helped define them.

Thankfully, the test results eventually came back clear.

I was healthy.

I stopped recording those videos.

Not because they no longer mattered, but because I knew I would do everything I could to stay healthy and remain present in my grandchildren's lives.

I wanted them to have me, not just recordings of me.

I still have those videos today.

I have never shown them to anyone.

They were never intended to become a business idea.

They were simply my attempt to stay connected to my grandchildren if I could not be there myself.

But the experience left me with something else.

A renewed sense of purpose.

And a sense of responsibility.

I realized that every family contains stories that can be lost.

Every person carries memories that may never be shared.

Every generation leaves behind knowledge, experiences, and perspectives that future generations often wish they could access.

When I thought my own grandchildren might face the same unanswered questions I had carried for most of my life, I began recording videos for them.

Those videos eventually became the foundation for Aftir.