After a parent dies: one private place for what you find

The stack you're managing right now

The phone still has 11,000 photos on it, and nobody knows the passcode. Her Gmail is still getting delivery notices for a magazine subscription. His Facebook is active, his iCloud is full, and you have a shoebox of printed photos on the kitchen table that nobody has touched yet.

You are holding all of this, often alone, often while also answering messages from siblings who want updates and extended family who want to help but don't know how. There is no single right place to start. What matters is that you don't lose what's already there.

What you get

A private home for the photos you already have

You can add photos from your phone's camera roll, or scan the printed ones from the shoebox with your phone camera, into a private family space - no scanner required, no USB drive needed.

A timeline that shows a whole life

The timeline lays the photos out year by year, including the undated ones, so the whole life is there, not just the last few years you happened to photograph.

A place siblings can actually contribute to

Send a guest link to your sister in another city - she can add her own memory to a photo without making an account, and without needing you to coordinate it.

Stories attached to the moments they belong to

You can record a voice note on any photo - it's transcribed and searchable - so the story behind a photo doesn't live only in your head.

Documents kept alongside the photos they explain

Scan the letter or recipe card with your phone - Glow handles documents too - and add a comment saying where you found it, so the context doesn't get separated from the object.

Privacy that doesn't require any decisions right now

Only the family members you invite can see it. Nothing is public. Ever.

How it shows up in your week

You don't need to sort anything before you start. Scan the first photo from the shoebox, or upload the most recent one from your camera roll - Glow will hold it, undated and unlabeled, until you're ready to add more.

When you find a photo on her phone that you want to keep, you can add it directly from your own camera roll after you've saved it there. You don't need to solve the locked phone question first in order to start building the archive with what you do have access to.

Your brother can add a memory to a photo you uploaded without needing his own account. You send him a guest link to that one photo. He writes what he remembers. It stays there, attached to the moment it belongs to.

When you find the recipe card in her handwriting at the back of the kitchen drawer, you can scan it with your phone and add a note: found in the kitchen, October 2024. That context would otherwise disappear the moment the house is cleared.

Your family archive isn't a one-time project. Your aunt can add a memory six months from now, when she's ready. You can start with a single scan. Nothing has to be sorted or labeled first.

Start gathering today

You're in the window when the people who hold memories are still reachable, when the photos are still findable, when the stories haven't yet dispersed into separate households and separate silences. That window doesn't close overnight, but it does gradually narrow. Understanding what needs to happen now versus what can wait can make the whole task feel less impossible.

Open Glow, scan the first photo, and invite one sibling to add a memory. That's the whole task for today. Join the founding families at tryglow.ai.