Forty Questions to Ask Your Grandparents Before It Is Too Late

There is a particular kind of grief that arrives late. It comes years after a funeral, usually while looking at a photograph, and it takes the form of a question you can no longer ask.

Who is the child on the left? Why did they leave that village? What was the argument about?

The remedy is unglamorous and completely reliable: ask while you can, and record the answer.

Before you begin

Three practical things make the difference between a recording your family treasures and one nobody plays twice.

**Ask permission properly.** "I would like to record you talking about your life, so the children have it." Almost nobody refuses that sentence. Many people refuse a camera pointed at them without warning.

**Record audio, not video.** People speak more freely when they are not being watched. A phone lying face down on the table between two cups of tea is the best recording equipment ever invented.

**Do not do it all at once.** Forty questions is three or four visits. An hour is plenty. Tiredness flattens a voice.

You are not conducting an interview. You are giving someone permission to remember out loud.

Beginnings

• Where were you born, and what did that place look like then?
• What is your earliest memory — not the best one, the earliest?
• What did your parents do all day?
• Who else lived in the house?
• What did the house smell like?
• What were you frightened of as a child?
• What did you do when you were bored?
• Was there a room you were not allowed into?

Childhood and school

• Who was your first friend, and what happened to them?
• What did you get in trouble for?
• Was there a teacher who mattered?
• What did you want to be?
• What did you eat when there was not much money?
• What was Sunday like?

Work and the world

• What was your first job, and what were you paid?
• What was the hardest work you ever did?
• Was there a moment you knew things had changed for your generation?
• What did you think of the news at the time?
• Did you ever want to leave, and did you?

Love

• When did you first fall in love?
• How did you meet the person you married?
• What did you wear?
• What did the two of you argue about?
• What did you learn about staying together?
• Who did you lose, and how did you carry it?

Parenthood

• What did you feel the first time you held your child?
• What did you get right?
• What would you do differently?
• Which of us are you most like?
• What did you never tell us at the time?

The long view

• What are you proudest of?
• What is the best day you can remember?
• What did you believe at twenty that you no longer believe?
• What do you know now that you wish you had known then?
• Is there something you have never said aloud?
• What do you want the great-grandchildren to know about you?
• What should we do with your things?
• What would you like us to remember on your birthday?

The two questions that matter most

Two questions consistently produce the material families keep forever.

**"Tell me about a completely ordinary day."** Grand events are usually already documented. The texture of an ordinary Tuesday in 1961 exists nowhere else.

**"What was your mother like?"** This reaches back one further generation, into people no living relative can describe. One recording, two lifetimes.

Afterwards

Do three small things while the recording is fresh.

• Write the date, the place, and who was present.
• Note the moments worth returning to, with rough timings.
• Send a copy to at least one other family member. A recording that exists in one place is a recording that is one accident away from not existing.

Then put it somewhere your children will find it without needing your password.

The questions above are only a scaffold. The best question is always the one that follows the last answer: *and then what happened?*