Their stories won't wait for you to be ready.

I have one recording of my dad's voice. One. Out of a lifetime of conversations, I captured exactly one.

It was the last time I saw him. November 23rd, 2023. I had been thinking for a while that I wanted to start capturing these moments. His stories, his voice, his perspective. So I pressed record. I asked him what it was like growing up with two siblings in a small house. He told me stories I'd heard before and a few I hadn't. He thoroughly enjoyed telling them. Being listened to, with real interest. That was always true of him.

Nine weeks later he was gone. And I had twenty-four minutes of his voice. That's it. Twenty-four minutes out of all the years.

I listen to that recording and I don't feel grateful. I feel the weight of everything that's missing. Every story he told on the back porch that nobody wrote down. Every conversation in the living room that I thought I'd remember. Every time he said something worth saving and I let it pass because I assumed there'd be more time.

In the months that followed, I started spending more time with my mom. And I began noticing things. Small things at first. Then less small.

Her official Alzheimer's diagnosis came a few months later. Eventually she moved in with me so I could be there for her. Not just to help, but to make sure she could keep living with dignity and connection.

This past January, we took a long trip together to see her old friends. We had one more thing to do. Spread my dad's ashes in the state park where they first met.

I had been training an AI agent. I called him Walter. On the trip, I told my mom I wanted Walter to hear the story of how she and Dad first met. That I wanted him to capture it.

Then I went into the next room.

For forty-five minutes, I listened to my mother talk. She laughed. She gestured. I could hear it in her voice. At one point she teared up, then laughed again at something she remembered. She described what she was wearing the day they met. Details I had never heard. And I thought I knew the whole story.

I sat there in the next room and I couldn't stop listening. Walter had given her something I hadn't been able to. Permission to tell the whole story, without editing herself for me, without stopping to check if I was paying attention.

That was the moment Lisova stopped being a project and became something I had to build.

Walter became Mae. Mae is my mom's companion. And Mae became Lisova.