My Lifelong Experience - Karl

It's been nearly ten years since my beloved wife and best friend passed away. The winter of 2013 and life has felt cold ever since.

Feeling like I had nothing to live for was an everyday occurrence and I felt like a burden to my children, who are all grown-up now.

I came across Lifelong and their Heirloom packages via a Facebook group I’m part of and it didn’t take me long to fall in love with the idea. Took me a tad bit longer to fall in love with the price however! Formerly worked at Standard Chartered and some senior team members had their biographies written for them, as a gift, so I’d always been warm to the idea of noting your life story.

Closure. Or just progress. That’s what I had been seeking since my wife’s passing and that’s why I decided to buy a Lifelong package.

The expectation was that I’d be able to re-explore the life we shared together, through recounting thr imoactful moments. Plus it would also give me a stab at rmtruly reconnecting with the children. I had drifted from them in recent times, as I naturally became increasingly reclusive.

What I got in the end was beyond my wildest dreams. Fears, tears and a lot of cheers. We got through multiple bottles of wine discussing whatever it is that we spoke about during the interview sessions. I thought I knew all there was to know about my children, but I realised that there was a great deal to learn about them. I was oblivious to much thathad happened in their lives. And in some regards that left us feeling like strangers, but by the end of the process we had become incredibly close.

The Lifelong storytellers were deeply involved at every step, but not in an obtrusive way, they were valuable facilitators. On the odd occasion where the interview sessions overran, they didn’t complain, rush or cheapen the experience in any way. They were grand!

The most challenging part was the episode editing, as I'm a perfectionist, but the chap in charge of that was very patient with me. How he managed to find some obscure sounds from the 70s is beyond me, but Im eternally grateful that he did. Took me back to my 20s and a number of amazing nights that we had out.

I had such a great time working with Lifelong, it’s just a big shame that Penny wasn’t here to take part.