Why LifeStone

Our Personal Journey (continued)

LifeStone Memorials

We buried our baby girl with our father. We looked at the headstone that marked their grave. It is beautiful and so so expensive. Cleaved and crafted in a quarry in India, or maybe China. It didn’t feel right, it doesn’t represent us as New Zealanders, not of our land, not of our hands. Surely we could craft a Stone as beautiful and long lasting from our own Whenua, the land that nourished our lives and return artisan skills and jobs to our shores. The journey of LifeStone Memorials began. We have spent years in research and development with the best minds of industry and universities, combined with Maori, Pacific, Asian and European artists and design engineers to deliver another option to our communities and families.

Lifestone Legacies & Tributes

We lost my son’s mother when he was 2 years old. On his 20th birthday he said one of the things he still deeply missed was not knowing the sound of his mum’s voice or the look of her face when she laughed. We wanted to create a platform where people could engage with the stories of their loved one in reflection, images, videos of their loved ones right from a physical space like a headstone, a monument or a special place. When we started working on LifeStone Legacy, my brother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer at the age of 45.

With young children, I worked with Jas on how we could capture some of his amazing wisdom, calmness and ways of thinking for his children as they got older and their children as they came along. It was no longer only about capturing stories and content after losing a loved one, but also providing an opportunity using technology to capture one’s own legacy. Each LifeStone Legacy has become a time capsule that can be continually updated as technology evolves, held in the most secure environments and made interactive from the internet and accessed from a physical place.

LifeStone Codes

We then had the challenge of activating technology from a physical space. My brother was not keen on having his life marked by a QR code that’s used to scan a pizza box, we wanted to create something more suited to purpose. So we crafted our own LifeStone Code that works like a QR code, but clearly is not one. We think the LifeStone Code is more appropriate to hold and connect the legacy of someone as important as my eldest brother.

My brother passed away surrounded by family in March 2018, aged 46 years old.