Good Place: Virtual memorial park

Hello Product Hunt 👋, A few months ago I lost my father to cancer. That day, when I accepted that my father is here with us for only a few more days, if not hours, I started to think about what we are going to do after, what that will look like, and what we will need to organize and prepare. He lost his battle to non-Hodgkin lymphoma and I consider myself lucky that he spent his last month with us, at home, in the closest family circle rather than in the hospital. BACKSTORY As strange as it sounds, it was a "good and happy death," very peaceful - everyone felt the relief with his last breath. No more pain, no more suffering. We have opened the window, to let the soul go, lit the candle, and mourned. It was a different mourning than you would see in movies. It was so calm, sad, but different sad (happy sad?). I always thought about the funeral and the ceremony as an event for relatives and friends who stayed behind. To say the final goodbye and to deal with it amongst others who are grieving. Chatting with relatives you haven’t seen for a while, hearing stories from their friends, seeing others mourning. To get some closure. That is when I started to think about Good Place. Where do we keep memories, where is the right place to come back to when we want to remind ourselves, or come closer to someone we have lost? Where do we get support from our closest ones, how do we let the distant family, relatives, and friends who can’t make it to any of the ceremonies share the moment with those who are grieving? Grieving is a process: to some, it might take a moment to overcome this, to others, it might take years. I wanted a place to come back to, read, watch, or listen to all the memories again and again and share it with others, to give them a chance for closure too. BENEFITS OF A VIRTUAL MEMORIAL PLACE You can access it from anywhere and anytime You can get everyone together, from wherever they are You are not left alone to grieve Global pandemic won’t stand in your way HOW IT WORKS Create a place, share a unique link with relatives and friends. Emphasis is on privacy - your place is private by default. Those who visit the link need to register first, validate their email, and then request access with a message to the place owner. The place owner is able to approve or deny their request. The same goes for sympathy notes/messages, where the notes need to be approved by the place owner to appear to the rest of the visitors that can access this place. DOING GOOD - SUSTAINABILITY I consider this as a not for profit project, and I have set aside a budget to keep the service running for another 3 years (which I will be increasing every now and then). Given the situation with the pandemic, it already found quite a number of users, and for me as the maker, this was the primary goal, to help others ease the grieving process during these times and beyond. I have been lucky to experience a good death at home, and I can’t possibly imagine how it must be during a pandemic when social distancing is in place and people, in general, are afraid of going out and meeting other people (or are prohibited to do so). A modest goal is to create an NGO within 3 years, to keep this project running, translate it to other languages, and make it sustainable through paid plans with more advanced features. My ultimate goal is to push it further with a 3D place, to replicate the mood I remember when my father passed away, to be able to sink into it when I feel like. If you think this might help someone in your area, please do share it with them.

Inline Manual

Maker

6yr ago

Coronavirus Near Me

@sotak Great idea. Thank you for building this.

@salil_sethi Thank you!

VentureBeat Insight

Hunter

I resonate with this project, having lost my Dad to cancer. Trying to bring together everyone's memories was a challenge, and since the funeral, they've become distributed again, so there's nowhere to go back to where I can see and read everything. Good Place is a wonderful idea, and I wish it had been created a few years ago. Happy to see it now exists, and that the makers are doing this as a non-profit project.

What a beautiful idea, @sotak! Thank you for opening this channel for love to flow, and to celebrate loved ones that have passed away!

@lindsey_schneider You are welcome Lindsey, the more people this will help the more happier it will make me.

I'm not getting the confirmation email after sign-up.

@danielctuttle Hi Daniel, sorry for the troubles, please do retry again, it should be ok now and this time you should get the email too.