Questions to ask your grandparents
The stories leave with the storyteller. These questions — organized by the decade they'll answer about — are how you keep them.
Almost everyone who has lost a grandparent says some version of the same sentence: I wish I had asked more while I could. The good news is that asking is easy — the hard part is knowing what to ask, and starting before the asking gets harder. Record the answers (see how to record family stories), and save them somewhere your family will actually keep them — the Keepsake vault was built for exactly this.
About being young (the 1940s–60s, for many families)
- What did your house sound like in the morning?
- What did you do after school — and who was waiting at home?
- What did your parents say money was for? What did they say it wasn't for?
- What was your first job, and what did it pay?
- What did you wear that embarrassed your parents?
About love and friendship
- How did you know Grandpa/Grandma was the one? Who told you first?
- Who was your best friend, and what happened to them?
- What did a date look like back then?
- What's the best advice about love anyone gave you — and did you take it?
About work and hard years
- What did you want to be before life happened?
- What was the hardest year of your life, and what got you through it?
- What do you know now about work that you wish you'd known at twenty?
The questions people forget to ask
- What's your earliest memory of me?
- What did your mother smell like?
- If our family had one story that should never be lost, what is it?
- What are you most proud of that no one ever mentions?
The one-rule method: ask one question per visit, not twenty. A single question asked slowly, with tea, gets a better story than a questionnaire ever will. Anchor the answers to dates in your family's heritage calendar so the stories keep their place in time.