Questions to ask before it's too late
If there is time, start with the house they grew up in. If there is not, start with the voice: ask them to say the names of everyone in the family out loud. That is the file families play again, and it is the first thing MemoriesBox asks for.
Two different situations, and one list will not do for both
Almost every list published under this title is written for the second situation and read by people in the first. If a doctor has given a number in weeks, a hundred questions about childhood are not useful to you. If your mother is seventy-one and well, the urgent list is the wrong shape and will frighten both of you for no reason.
So there are two lists on this page, and the order changes completely between them. When time is short you record the voice first and the biography last. When there is time you do the opposite.
47% of Americans regret not recording or documenting a conversation with someone who has since died, and 59% have never done it at all (YouGov, June 2022, n=6,090). The figure covers recording or documenting, so it is not a statement about voice specifically. What it does show is that the common ending is not a bad recording. It is no recording.
When there isn't much time
The instinct is to reach for the life story. Resist it for twenty minutes and get the things that cannot be reconstructed by anybody else first. In rough priority order: the sound of them, the names, the facts nobody else holds, anything said directly to a named person, and then, if there is room, one story told properly.
The first ten minutes: the voice, not the biography
What families miss is not the chronology. It is the sound — the way she said your name, the laugh, the phrase she used when something went wrong. Get that on the record while it is easy.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Can you say everyone's names for me, one at a time? | And what do you call each of them, the way you actually say it? |
| How did you answer the telephone? | Say it the way you used to. |
| What did you always say when somebody was leaving the house? | Where did you get that from — who said it to you? |
| Can you sing the one you used to sing? | Who taught you that? |
| Tell me the joke you always tell. | Who did you learn it from? |
The facts only they have
These are the ones that are genuinely lost. Not sentiment, information.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Who is in these photographs, and roughly when? | Who took them, and where were they living? |
| What illnesses run in the family? | Who had them, and at what age? |
| How do you make it? | How much, roughly — show me with your hands. |
| Where are the papers, the deeds, the passwords? | Who else knows that? |
| What were the family names before they were changed? | Who changed them, and why? |
Things said to a person, not to a camera
Ask them to speak to someone by name. Not "what would you want people to know" but "say it to her." The difference in what comes out is not small.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Say something to my daughter for when she is older. | Say her name first, so she knows it is for her. |
| What do you want said at the funeral, and by whom? | Is there anything you do not want said? |
| Is there anybody you want thanked? | What exactly should they be told? |
| Is there anything you have been meaning to say and have not? | Do you want it kept for after, or given to them now? |
One story, told properly
If there is time for a single story, ask for the one they tell most, then step off the polished track: what happened in the hour before, who else was in the room, what they did that evening. One set piece told properly beats nine subjects skimmed.
When there is time
If there is no diagnosis and no number in weeks, put the urgent list away. It changes the temperature of the room, and people who feel they are being processed stop talking.
The right shape here is small and repeated: forty minutes, several times, over months. It is also how anyone reaches the difficult subjects — regret, money, faith, the person the family stopped mentioning — because those do not open on a first visit for anybody.
Start here
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Which door did you use to come into the house you grew up in? | What was the first thing you saw when it opened? |
| What was on the kitchen table when you got home from school? | Who put it there, and what were they doing while you ate? |
| What did the house smell like on a Sunday? | Whose job was that, and did anybody help? |
| What was the first thing you bought with your own money? | What did it cost, and how long had you saved? |
| Who lived next door? | What happened to them? |
The middle of the conversation
Their parents, at your age
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What was your father like when you were nine? | What time did he leave the house, and what time did he come back? |
| What did your mother do all day? | Which part of it would you refuse to do now? |
| Who was in charge of the money? | What happened when there was not enough? |
Work
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What was the first job you were paid for? | What did you get wrong in the first week? |
| What did you earn, and what did it buy? | What did you spend it on that you did not tell anyone about? |
| Which job did you stay in longest? | Who did you work with that you still think about? |
| Was there a job you wanted and did not get? | What would that life have looked like? |
How they met, and the years after
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Where were you standing when you first saw each other? | What did you think was going to happen next? |
| What did you argue about in the first year? | How did that usually end? |
| What was it like when the first baby came? | Who helped, and who did not? |
Change
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What did you have to do that people do not have to do any more? | Who taught you how? |
| When did the money get easier, if it did? | What was the first thing you bought when it did? |
| What year was the hardest? | What got you through it? |
Questions to save for later
These need at least two sessions behind them. The signal that you have earned them is that they start telling you things you did not ask for.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Was there someone the family stopped mentioning? | What were you told at the time? |
| What are you glad nobody found out? | Does anybody know now? |
| What do you think happens afterwards? | Has that changed as you have got older? |
| What do you want us to do with your things? | Which one should stay in the family, and who should have it? |
| Is there anything you would do differently? | Did you ever say that out loud to anyone? |
The question that usually works when nothing else does
Which of your things should stay in the family, and who should have it?
It is practical, which is why people who dislike being interviewed will answer it. It hands them authority at a point in life when most decisions are being made by other people, and it is one of the very few questions a seriously ill person is glad to be asked, because it is a job that only they can do.
Every object drags a story behind it. The watch has a father in it, the ring has a shop and a week's wages in it, the tools have a workshop and a man who taught him. Ask about the thing and you get the story for nothing, and you get it in an order that means something to them rather than to your list.
Do not turn the last weeks into a project
The recording is less important than the visit. If somebody is tired, put the phone away and stay anyway.
Ten minutes is a real recording. Voice memos on any phone are free and good enough, and doing that today beats a proper setup that never happens — how to save a voicemail forever covers keeping what you already have. In a hospice or a hospital, ask the staff before recording in a shared room.
Ask permission on the recording, every time, and say who will hear it. Somebody who is very ill is not in a strong position to object, which makes asking properly more important rather than less. Our position is on who agreed to be recorded, and what to prioritise is at what to record when there isn't much time.
If they say there's nothing to tell
It arrives more often at the end than in the middle, and it usually means "I am tired" or "I would rather talk about you." Both are answers. Ask something small and factual — a price, a shed, a bus route — or put the questions down and let them ask about your week instead. The counter-moves are on what to ask when they say there's nothing to tell.
Questions people ask
What should I ask my parents before they die?
If time is short: their voice saying the family's names, the facts only they hold, and anything they want said directly to a named person. If there is time, start with the house they grew up in and work outwards over several sessions.
How do I bring it up without upsetting them?
Give a reason that is not about their death. "I want the grandchildren to hear you tell it" works. So does asking for one specific thing — a recipe, the story about the car, who is in a photograph — and letting the rest follow from there.
How long should I record for?
Forty minutes at a time when someone is well, fifteen to twenty when they are ill or tired. Stop while it is still going well. Several short recordings are easier to listen to afterwards than one long one.
What if we run out of time and I only get one recording?
One recording is a great deal more than most families have. If it contains their voice saying the names of the people they love, it will be the file that gets played, whatever else is or is not on it.
Related: The first twenty minutes · Questions that still work when memory is going · What to record when there isn't much time · Take everything with you, whenever you like · All the question pages
MemoriesBox records the interview in the person's own voice, keeps it in the European Union, and lets the family ask it questions later. $139 a year, first 14 days free. A phone voice memo, made today, is also a perfectly good start.