When you lose a loved one, the first thing you forget is the sound of their voice.
Dimity Brassil knows this all too well. In 2011, the freelance journalist and the founder of A Lasting Tale, lost her father, Pat and her sister, Belinda, within a couple of months of each other and realised she’d never hear the sound of their voices again.
“I could listen to a podcast of people that had a business, were selling a book – all great things, and I could access their life wisdom,” Brassil told Women’s Agenda.
“But I couldn’t hear the voices of my own father or my own sister anymore.”
This ultimately served as Brassil’s “aha” moment – when she realised that she could capture her loved ones’ voices forever and preserve their memories a beautiful way.
Brassil’s business, A Lasting Tale, allows families to do the same. With more than 40 freelance journalists dispersed around the country, elderly people or dying people can sit down and record their family history and their life story. The journalists at A Lasting Tale then take the interview and create a private podcast file for families to keep forever.
To this day, Brassil and her team have captured the voices of more than 1500 Aussies sharing their pearls of wisdom. And they’re not stopping there.
“Every single day I’m learning more that there is a need for this,” Brassil said.
“There’s always one person that wants to hear what you have to say, and one is enough, even if that person is you.”
Recalling the fleeting memories
Seven years after losing her father and her sister, Brassil sat her 89-year-old mother down.
“Come on mum,” she said to her at the time, “you need to be my guinea pig.”
Her mother, Anne, would be the first of many voices Brassil and the team at A Lasting Tale would capture forever. But Anne was hesitant to start with.
“She didn’t think that her life story had much worth,” Brassil told Women’s Agenda.
“She thought she hadn’t achieved much, but actually she achieved a lot.”
Throughout the interview, Brassil learned more about her mother and her life than she had even known before. She was asking questions perhaps she wouldn’t have asked as the daughter of Anne, but questions she would ask every day working as a freelance journalist.
“Most people actually don’t know what questions to ask their own parent or grandparent,” Brassil said.
Brassil took the interview with Anne, who shared her family history and her life story, and created a podcast for her family.
But maybe she wasn’t the only one that would be interested in capturing her family history through the voice of the matriarch of the family, Brassil thought.
And she was right. Sensory memory – the sound of someone’s voice, or the smell of their clothes – is short-term. It typically lasts less than a second.
The brain will register how something feels, sounds, smells, tastes or looks, and although it doesn’t permanently retain it, sensory memories can resurface when they are recognised again.
It’s easy to remember what a loved one looks like after they pass if you have photographs of them. But the sound of someone’s voice is harder to capture and remember forever.
A Lasting Tale aims to change that.
“Mum and I together decided that it would be great for me to use my interviewing skills to teach other people how to use audio and what questions to ask so they could do their own private family histories,” Brassil said.
Brassil built an app and created workshops for people to learn how to conduct their own interviews with loved ones. She also conducted her own interviews with people in her area in Albury on behalf of local families.
“The professional interviews were something I thought wouldn’t take off because of the time involved and the cost and all that,” she said.
“And I was wrong.”
Reminiscing
More and more people started reaching out to Brassil asking her to conduct interviews of their loved ones.
“It took me a few years of feedback and talking to customers and talking to people about it to realise that what they actually want is a professional to come and do it,” she said.
As a journalist, Brassil was asking the interviewees questions that their family members had never thought to ask. And it wasn’t just helping family members learn more about their family history.
Reminiscence therapy is a type of therapy proven to make an impact in peoples’ lives. It can help build self-esteem, provide security and support and ease depression and anxiety.
The therapy can help people through grief, as they come to terms with the loss of a loved one. Hearing their voice again, remembering how it sounds and hearing family histories and stories through the sound of their voice can help people cope with loss.
For elderly people, particularly people suffering from dementia or Alzheimers, recalling personal histories reignites strong bonds to people, places and feelings and can improve their overall well-being. So retelling stories, feelings and family history can help people in their old age.
It’s not always easy to get older people talking though, Brassil said.
“That over 75 generation are really very humble, unassuming. They’re a very silent generation, actually,” she said.
“But there’s always one person that wants to hear what you have to say, and one is enough, even if that person is you.
“I think that’s a really important message.”
‘It’s definitely something now.’
Five years later, A Lasting Message is an Australia-wide business made up of a team of more than 40 freelance journalists – about 80 per cent of which are women.
“So if you have a loved one living in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Cairns, Wagga Wagga – you can search for an interviewer and we can send out a journalist to your loved one in their home to interview them,” Brassil said.
Once an interview is booked, the journalist sends a questionnaire to family members to learn more about their family history, life highlights, important stories and questions they have always wanted to ask their loved one.
“The family members love this process,” Brassil said.
“They have more conversations with their loved ones about stories, and it brings up more stories for them.”
Then comes the interview day, where over a cup of tea, the journalist can ask all the burning questions the family had for them – plus so much more.
The final product is a private podcast audio file, which the family can keep and cherish forever.
Brassil manages and runs this nation-wide business all from her home in regional Australia, Albury, NSW. Her work with A Lasting Tale was recognised by the NSW Government, becoming a finalist for the AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award in NSW in May 2023.
“I think mine is a great story about women’s business – and you can grow it from regional Australia,” she said.
Brassil didn’t realise just how special her business was until a few years down the track.
“At the start, I thought maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” she said.
“But it’s definitely something now.”