My grief didn’t start the day my dad died. It started with a phone call from the doctor: stage IV melanoma. It had spread to his brain.

For four years, I cared for him, caught between hoping for more time and knowing we were running out of it.

I thought those years might somehow prepare me. But nothing could have prepared me for a world without him.

Suddenly, there were passwords to find, accounts to close, and calls I could barely bring myself to make. As an only child, I was the keeper of it all.

Then I'd hear his laugh in my head and worry that one day I wouldn't remember how it sounded. I wanted to hold onto his stories, his advice, even the smallest things.

But those thoughts came tangled with questions I couldn’t put aside:


It all mattered, and there was nowhere for it to go.

So I built Heartchive: somewhere big enough for the love, the loss, and the practical things that come with caring for someone or losing them.

It began with my dad, but every relationship has its own story, whether it’s with a parent, partner, sibling, friend, or pet.