My grandmom died ten years ago, a month before I joined Amazon to start working on the Kindle. Everything in my life was shifting; I was selling my house and boxing up all my belongings to move to Seattle, to start at Amazon. I had just gotten married, and was about to go on a honeymoon. And then, in the middle of this, I heard the bad news about my grandmom.

I put everything else on hold — my honeymoon, my move to Seattle — and flew out to the funeral in New Jersey. A rainy cemetery. Not exactly a primo honeymoon destination.

My grandmother was the most loving person I had ever known. She was very gentle, too. She had always wanted to be a Catholic nun, but falling in love with my grandfather scuttled those dreams; still, she went to church twice a day, three times a day on weekends.

I have such fond memories of her love and generosity — she could barely scrape two nickels togeher, but she would always have presents for me on my birthday. She mailed me care packages of chocolate and saltines when I was in college. In fact, for years, even when I was in college, and after I had graduated, she always called me up on my birthday to sing “Happy Birthday To You” over the phone. She wanted to be the first person to wish me happy birthday.

There’s so much more to her, so much more depth than I can convey here. But when the funeral was over and I looked back on things, I wondered what remained of my her. What, of my grandmom, did I have — besides memories?

Very little acually. I found two old videotapes where she had a few cameo roles. And my dad emailed me a digial recording he made of her, an audio tape, when she was practically on her deathbed. Just thirty minutes long, she talked in her warm, loving voice about her memories of my grandfather, what it was like growing up in the 1930s, and stories about my relatives. I got to hear her talk a little about me, and my brother, and others in my family.

And that was it. She was such an impressive person, with such a warm loving presence, but very little trace of her remains.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have spent more time with her, recording conversations with her. I would have sat with her in her living room, with a digital recorder or a smartphone, recording what she said. Interviewing her. Getting not just her life story recorded, but how she sounded — her beautiful laugh, or the way she would say “tsk tsk” at any impropriety. And then I take these recordings, and use them (with Be Forever Me) to help her and her stories stay alive forever.

Sadly, the half-hour of her that I have isn’t quite enough.

What I want is enough of her that I can ask her quesions, and hear surprising and unexpected answers. And for that, I need a lot of recordings — hours and hours. I could have done it, if I spent an hour with her every Thanksgiving and Christmas, asking her questions, and recording them. I could have gradually assembled an archive of her voice, of her stories, of her personality.

But I didn’t, and I feel awful because of it.

That opportunity is gone now, and all I have is memories.

As one of the inventors of Be Forever Me, I do believe that our words and stories and memories and ideas can outlast time. But you have to make time to outlast time. You have to pause and record the voices of the people you love and care about, before they’re gone. That’s the saddest thing that I have learned.

Digital immortality is possible. But it needs data. Enough data to reconstruct a person, and what they would have said, and how they said it. The data’s not hard to get; it’s as easy to get as sitting down with an audio recorder, a video camera, or a smartphone, or a tablet. It’s surprisingly easy in fact to archive all this; what’s hard is the realization that time is running out, and you can’t take for granted the fact that your loved ones will always stay the same, in good health.

These days, I try to visit my parents and my one living grandparent whenever I can. I ask them questions, and record their answers. I do this for an hour at a time, and then we do other things — like cook, or play games, or go for a walk — it’s not all-consuming, and doesn’t have to be. It’s atually fun; I find that when I interview my family, they love the experience; they love performing, they love sharing their lives, knowing that they’re being filmed.

I might have lost my grandmother forever, but it’s not too late to save the other people I care the most about.