Question pack
Questions to Ask Your Aging Parents (Before the Stories Are Gone)
The questions adult children put off asking: your parents' childhoods, how they chose each other, and the family history only they can still tell.
Most adult children carry a list of questions they keep meaning to ask and never do. The answers aren't secret; there's always another visit, and the visits fill up with logistics. Then one day the only person who knew your grandmother's maiden name, or why the family left Ohio, isn't there to ask.
This list is the antidote to "we'll get to it." It covers the ground that vanishes when a parent goes: their early life, the courtship, the family lore, and the plain facts (names, addresses, jobs) that no one else has written down.
Their childhood and family
- Who did the work that kept your childhood household running, and what did it look like day to day?
- Which of your grandparents did you know in person, and what do you remember them doing?
- What did your family eat when money was short?
- Where did the whole family gather, and what was on the table when it did?
- Who made the rules in your house — and who got away with bending them?
- What did you want to be at twelve, and what happened to that plan?
How they met and chose each other
- What's the full story of how you two met — not the two-sentence version?
- What did you each notice first about the other?
- Was there someone else in the picture when you met?
- What did the proposal look like — where, when, and what was said?
- What did your parents think of the match at the time?
- What was your first year of marriage like — where did you live, and on what?
The family story only they can tell
- What was happening in your lives in the years just before I was born?
- What do you remember about the year I arrived?
- Which relative should I know more about than I do, and what's their story?
- What family falling-out or reconciliation do I only know half of?
- What's the story that got told at every family gathering, and is it true?
Practical history worth recording
- Can you walk me through every address you've ever lived at, in order?
- What were your parents' full names, and their parents'?
- What jobs have you each held, from first to last?
- Why did the family move, each time it moved?
- What's the story behind our names — first, middle, and last?
- Where are the photographs, letters, and documents, and what's in them?
How to use these questions
Treat this as a project with a calendar, not a conversation you'll have someday: pick one section per month. Tell your parents ahead of time what you want to ask about. Far from spoiling it, the notice gives them a week to dig out photographs and rehearse memories, and you'll get fuller answers.
Interview them separately at least once. Couples edit each other; the story of how they met is usually two different stories, and both are worth having. Keep the practical-history answers somewhere your siblings can see them, because the second-worst outcome is the answers dying with you instead.