There's a moment most of us don't see coming. It's not dramatic. It's a Tuesday, maybe, and you're on the phone with your mom. She mentions something about her father — a detail you've never heard before — and you think, I should ask her more about that sometime.
Sometime never comes as often as we'd like.
The stories we lose without realizing it
According to a study by StoryCorps, the average person will lose a parent or grandparent before they think to record a single conversation with them. Not because they don't care — but because we assume the stories will always be there. That our parents will always be a phone call away, ready to tell us about the summer they spent in that small town, or why they chose the name they gave us.
But memory is more fragile than we think. Details blur. Timelines merge. The story your dad told you about his first job at seventeen slowly becomes a sentence: "He worked at a gas station once." The texture is gone.
Why it matters now, not later
Here's the thing about family stories: they're not just entertainment. They're identity. Research from Emory University found that children who know their family's stories — where grandparents grew up, challenges parents overcame, how the family weathered hard times — have higher self-esteem and a stronger sense of belonging.
These stories give us roots. They tell us who we are by showing us where we came from.
And the window for capturing them is smaller than we think. Not because anything bad is about to happen — but because the richest, most detailed versions of these stories exist right now, in the minds of the people who lived them. Every year that passes, a few more details fade.
It doesn't have to be a big production
When people hear "preserve family stories," they imagine documentary cameras and formal interviews. But the best family stories come out naturally — in conversation. Over the phone. While driving somewhere. In the comfortable back-and-forth of a chat.
That's why we built Memoora the way we did. No apps to download. No complicated setup. Just a phone call. Your parent picks up, has a conversation, and the story is preserved — their voice, their pauses, their laughter. All of it.
Start with one question
You don't need to capture everything at once. Start with one question the next time you talk to a parent or grandparent:
- "What's something you remember about your parents that nobody else knows?"
- "What was the best day you ever had?"
- "What's a decision you made that changed everything?"
You might be surprised what comes out. And you'll be glad you asked.