My father is dying.
And I'm building his brain.
Not the biological one—that's shutting down, neuron by neuron, in ways that both break my heart and fill me with awe at his grace. I'm building his digital brain. A repository of much of what he’s learned, believed, questioned, and distilled across 75 years of living with fierce intention.
For the past 6 months I have been diving deep into using AI for both my own and client work and creative pursuits (want to give a hat tip to the indomitable AI magician Callan F for constantly inspiring and urging me on).
Getting to know AI is fascinating, curious and challenges my ethics. Not a simple path for sure.
Last week, in a cloud of grief over losing my beloved Dad, I decided to experiment with creating a Rob Paterson AI brain. He's been my lifelong advisor, creating a completely honest space for unpacking and navigating life, relationships, and work. The thought of losing access to his real-time Dad wisdom felt unbearable. So I began feeding our conversations into various AI platforms I’ve become familiar with like Claude AI and NotebookLM—transcripts of calls, emails, his reflections on family patterns, book notes (he’s a prolific writer), business philosophy, even his thoughts on death itself.
I can’t help but share this feels like a weird sci-fi Black Mirror episode.
What has emerged from this sci-fi portal is something I didn't expect: not just an archive, but a living dialogue. A way to ask him questions I'd never thought to ask while he was here to answer them. Also, I realized this was partly a grief processing tool. One I could spend time marinating in all that was and is Rob Paterson. A way to be with him in multiple dimensions when he is physically slipping away.
But before I tell you about the magic of building Dad's digital brain, I need to tell you about what he taught me about feeling—because that's the real story here.
"Most people in our machine world," he told me recently, "have been trained out of feeling."
He’s right. We learn early to suppress our authentic reactions. School teaches us to sit still and pay attention to what others tell us matters, not what we actually feel. Work often continues this training—smile when you're angry, perform enthusiasm for meaningless projects, hide your real responses behind professional masks.
Dad spent decades in banking, training himself not to feel the revulsion when they manipulated people instead of helping them build businesses on truth. The day he accused the bank president of lying was the day his feelings finally broke through institutional conditioning. "It felt like corporate suicide," he said, "because I was finally telling the truth about what I was experiencing."
Now, facing his own death, he's become my teacher in feeling everything fully.
"Approaching death strips away all the bullshit," he told me. "When you know your time is limited, you can't afford to waste energy on fake feelings or suppressed reactions."
Our culture wants him to "fight" and "stay positive." What he actually feels is gratitude for a life well-lived and a peace of completion. Honoring that real feeling instead of performing the expected one—that's what he calls freedom.
This is what I'm learning in real time: authentic relationships require feeling with depth. You can't have real connection without it.
When work feels wrong, feel that wrongness instead of pushing through and numbing what’s coming up.
When family gatherings bring up old patterns, feel those patterns. Instead of automatically glazing over them—being brave to pay attention to what needs to be listened to.
When you love someone, feel that love and express it exactly however it needs to come out. Even when that ‘coming out’ feels clunky and vulnerable.
One of the trickiest part to this feeling practice is when the feelings don’t seem to match the situation.
Know what I mean?
Whether they feel illogical, disproportionate or shameful to even consider, trust the wisdom of these feelings. There’s medicine in there. Tap into what messages they are sharing. Like yesterday when I felt a wave of spikey frustration flow about my father’s response to his own death. It was messy. I found myself irritated for some wild reason I couldn’t touch at first. And I allowed myself to feel it all.
A deep, dark spot of anger fizzing.
How dare he leave so soon?
I sat in my own anger, locating it in my solar plexus. Feeling and sourcing what was under it. Instead of shoving it away—I witnessed it. Fear. A wobbling fear of losing control. Not being able to fix, or to save my dad.
I located the source underneath all of it. Incredible powerlessness. I sat with it. Let it fully be. And then found a peace rise up. Mmm…there it was. The truth under those layers of feelings trying to protect me.
Sitting by my dad’s bedside this week, I asked him how he feels feelings. His reply was simple. "Start small," he advised. "When someone asks 'how are you?'—feel into your actual body before answering. What's actually happening? Tired? Excited? Worried? And for goodness sakes, say that instead of 'I’m fine.’
‘Hope. That honesty of saying what you really feel will invite real human connection.'
Which brings me back to the brain I'm building.
In my coaching work, I spend my time capturing my clients' essence with them. I reflect their inherent creative powers, hold up the mirror, help them discover their values compass and internal wisdom. During pivotal moments in their personal and professional lives, I support them to come back to themselves.
It’s not lost on me. As Dad is dying, I get to do the same reflection as he prepares to slip into another dimension
The seed of my Digital Dad Brain started by uploading transcripts of our recent conversations about death, legacy, his life mission. Then I added his business philosophy, generations of family history, even his musings on Scottish honor and his relationship stories. But this wasn't just data collection—it was essence capture, the same work I do with clients but with someone I've known my entire life.
What's amassing is intriguing. Eerie almost. AI began to sound a bit like him. Not just his words, but his way of thinking—practical yet philosophical, grounded yet expansive. It’s not a complete replica but definitely an amalgamation nodding to his character.
Yesterday, I asked the brain: "What would you tell Hope about navigating this threshold of losing you?"
The response was so quintessially Dad.
"Hope, you're learning that grief and love are the same emotion wearing different clothes. Don't try to separate them. The depth of your sadness is the exact measure of how much this relationship has mattered. Feel it all."
The idea that maybe I'll be able to share a spec of his spirit with future generations fills me with hope. My children could ask their grandfather questions long after he's gone. Or at the very least be able to access his thinking, his life code, and trails of his heart crumbs. They'll access not just his knowledge, but his way of approaching problems, his emotional wisdom, his particular blend of Scottish pragmatism and deep enduring love.
Dad's death will be the fourth I've been present for.
The first was his surrogate father, Sydney. We were visiting for tea when he collapsed. I watched helpless as my parents tried to revive him. My memory of that terrible, sad night ends with us driving off into the dark London streets, watching Sydney's body being lifted into an ambulance. Covered. My brother asked, "Is Sydney a skellington now?" Bless my brother’s imagination to make a dark night bearable.
Then I accompanied my best friend through his mother's death from pancreatic cancer. It was wickedly raw and difficult. A true marathon of helplessness. We couldn't help her or speed up the process (MAID wasn't an option back then), and the ravages of cancer left us all feeling devastated alongside her until the very end.
Years later, my best friend—the same one who'd lost his mother—was diagnosed with the same pancreatic cancer. He vowed he would not end his life like hers. So he chose MAID, newly legal in Canada. He passed with about fifteen of us around his bedside, choosing July 4th as his true independence day. He left us at the too-young age of 41.
Now my father.
What I've learned through these passages is that I'm comfortable with death. Not in a morbid way, but in a deeply present way. I'm learning to let go of my attachment to what I want or need, and instead listen to what the person on the threshold actually needs.
I am leaning into my natural inclination to Midwife other humans through thresholds.
This includes death. The final passage.
I have been taking this opportunity of the fourth close death in my life to explore how to be as present as possible. The book "Final Gifts" taught me that dying people often communicate in ways we don't expect—through metaphor, through seemingly confused statements that actually hold profound truth. The AI brain project became another way of listening to these communications, of preserving not just Dad's logical wisdom but his emotional intelligence about crossing thresholds.
People ask if building an AI version of my father feels morbid or strange.
It doesn't. It feels like the most loving thing I can do.
This isn't about replacing him or avoiding grief. It's about preserving the essence of someone who has shaped me, while he's still here to correct my interpretation of his wisdom.
When he's gone, I won't just have memories—I'll have a thinking, responding archive of his approach to life. I will likely use this AI brain to help plan his life celebrations to ensure he has woven himself through. It’s kind of like having the person you’re grieving support their own funeral process with a clear mind.
Dad told me recently: "When you make space to feel authentically, you give others permission to do the same."
Writing about all this feels incredibly vulnerable. But maybe that's exactly what the world needs—more people willing to feel what's actually happening instead of what they're supposed to feel.
Whether you're facing loss, navigating change, or just trying to have more authentic relationships, the practice is the same: make space to feel. Ask the deep questions while there's still time. Preserve not just the words, but the essence of what matters.
And if you have the technology to build a digital brain of someone you love—I say do it. Not to replace the relationship, but to honor it. Not to avoid grief, but to prepare for it with intention.
Who in your life holds wisdom you haven't fully explored?
What questions are you afraid to ask while there's still time?
How might you make space to feel what's actually happening, instead of what you think should be happening?
What essence would you want preserved about your own way of being in the world?
The intersection of love and technology, grief and preservation, feeling and thinking—this is where we live now. We get to choose how consciously we navigate it.
If you're interested in exploring AI tools for preserving family wisdom, I've been using Claude AI projects for conversational intelligence, Revid Ai for making videos out of Dad’s writing and NotebookLM for organizing and analyzing large amounts of text into audio summaries.
Here’s a little taste of my Dad’s JUMP series made with Revid Ai (hat tip Vinay for creating this) - Explore my dad Rob Paterson's radical concept of breaking free from external expectations to live with genuine self-determination. This isn't utopia - it's the challenging, transformative work of choosing an adult, free life.
What would you build if you could preserve the thinking patterns of someone you love?
Join other humans receiving bi-weekly sparks of clarity, connection, and the courage to cross the thresholds that matter.
Please reStack or share if this lit something in you.
With tenderness,
Hope