That's the most perfect answer!

He keeps telling me things I want to know, and more.

But we're at the last moments

I'll cross my fingers and hope!!!

Thank you elmer!!! Really

I've been thinking lately how interesting it would have been to hear about my dad's memories and his parents' experiences during the 1919 General Strike that took place in our city. It was a huge labor movement that pitted native English speaking police and government officials against non-English speaking recently arrived immigrants who were poorly paid laborers. My grandparents were among those recently arrived from the Ukraine and doubtless were swept up in the turmoil. The very geographic origins of the strikers as well as their demands were seen as politically suspicious and they were harshly dealt with by the established hierarchy of the city. However, my parents (both deceased) always preferred to look forward and not reminisce about what was or could have been.

Take a look at Storyworth. I believe it's under $100 and gives you a list of questions to choose from and use. It provides structure.

My kids got me this for my birthday year before last. I think I got a new question each week but there's no reason why you couldn't do all at once. I really enjoyed completing it and they really enjoyed my responses. Thinking about how to respond to particular questions caused me to reflect and reconsider events and people from years ago. Doing so led me to insights and clarity I hadn't had before.

Hopefully, my last years are not coming anytime soon (as far as I know). I can be a difficult person to choose a gift for and they typically collaborate to brainstorm for a group gift. It was one of the better efforts.

Good luck.

I don't know if it's exactly the same thing Elmer mentioned or not, but my friend's kids gave her the same or similar for Christmas a couple years ago. Last time she talked about it, she was still working on it. I think it's a great idea.

I still have so many questions I wish I had asked my parents, but they're both gone now so I can't do that.

I've often wished I had asked my mother or grandmother, "What was great uncle Chick's real name?" I have a church that Uncle Chick constructed out of burnt matchsticks in the 1930s or 40s, I believe. I'm told he built it while incarcerated in the Pennsylvania State Penitentiary. I'd like to know more about him.

My father’s been gone for 3.5 years, and to this day I’ll often catch myself wondering about something and thinking i’ll ask him, he’ll definitely know, oh wait never mind.

At one point he did a bunch of geneology, we have a lot of documents and we do have a some interesting ancestors, but for all the stories he told while doing it, far too little got documented. So I’d love to fill some gaps but in the end it’s fairly inconsequential.

Many years ago we were talking about his time in the army and he said there were areas he couldn't go into detail about because it was confidential. I'm sure time has long since declassified anything he may have worked on, so I wish I had thought to ask again. Again, inconsequential. I would like to know where his black sailor's knife is. And while I'm at it, how he originally got into sailing. No one seems to know. Also would like the story behind one particular ring.

I have many more personal curiosities, but I'm not sure I would be better off knowing. I hope some of my past dies wirh me. An aunt made an off-hand comment about him a while back that has stuck with me in an unpleasant way. She didn't mean anything by it, but it stung and I'd be happier not having heard it. But it may be a valuable lesson:

My mom was left her mother's memoires. Apparently there are some pretty unpleasabt things in there. A few years ago she told my sister about it, and instructed her to destroy it without reading, upon her death. Back then that piqued my curiosity and I thought we'd have to read it. Today, I know I won't.

My personal feeling, you’ve got limited time. You don’t need to squeeze out every last drop. If you can get some memories out of him in the course of concersation, great. But don’t force it. Be there with him. That’s what you’ll remember.

Both of my parents have been deceased for over 40 years, each lived well into their senior years. My first question would be "How are they doing and what is it like on the other side?"

There are a bunch of things I'd like to know that I never asked. But one I realize is that they never talked to me about their xmas as kids. I have no idea what they did...did they go to church? The whole family get together? (It was a really big family!) Did they have a tree? Presents? Somehow, they so focused xmas on us kids that they never seemed to share their own childhood holidays.

My parents and grand parents all filled out a similar book. It's great to have with our heritage albums.

I wonder if my experience with my kids, who are in and a few beyond their 30s, is common with some of you or not.

We're all close. We see each other many times a year. We don't live near one another, but we talk to each often. Usually a call from one or more daily.

I describe this only to suggest none of them have gone off into a different social orbit of life apart from the rest of us.

Interestingly though, none of them has an iota of interest in our ancestral heritage. Little or no interest in the lives of their grandparents, for example, other than to the extent they were their parents' parents and how experiences and their personalities influenced the earlier lives of me and my wife separately. The Storyworth exercise was mostly about me, not generations past.

No family heirlooms, no keepsakes. When the last of my parents and the last of my wife's parents died, there were no items they knew of that had been in their possession that they had any interest in. I guess my wife and I are the same in that particular matter, perhaps for physical items. Maybe that's why?

Some of you describe how stories of this person or that item might have been passed down but weren't. How you might have known more about this or about that.

Do your kids feel the same way as you do, about ancestors in generations before you?

There are a few of you I would just love to hug on this thread, I'm sorry if I brought up bad memories.

It's just been such a delight getting to know him finally, because he was overseas for so much of my life, while I was still in the states. He's a great storyteller, so I like to give him "prompts". Today was no exception!

He brought his wife, my stepmother, whom I adore!!! And I even got to learn about her past some.

I asked him his favorite memory of all six of the children, I got to find out about my older siblings, when I wasn't around. I'll just say we're a bunch of bad a**es who don't take crap from people. My biological brother who is oldest, and my middle adopted brother, both knocked bigger kids off their bikes, who were bullying both brothers. Scrawny little kids, who stood up for themselves, for instance. Daddy said he knew he wouldn't have to worry about either one of them! And like food, I got an answer I didn't like, one that really really stung. Helps me understand my younger sister a lot more.

I found out both Dad and Lo, lost their father at a very young age. Like someone said above, just in conversation it came up so I asked them both how do you think your life would have been different had your dad lived? Daddy would have continued playing sports in high school, because he had to quit in order to work and support the family, but that's about all that really changed for him, he thought. Her father was a high standing Chinese official, and she would have lived in a palace with servants (and was offered the opportunity to be adopted by uncles), but chose instead to live with her mom. Her mom raised seven children, by taking her blanket and setting vegetables out on it, working everyday in the market. Her life would have been really different.

We'll get together for more lunches as much as I can, and as much as he can, but I'm still going to try and think of some more questions I haven't asked yet 😉

My kids are high achool and college age, so who knows what they’ll be intereated in. Some things are interesting mainly because of how long they’ve been in the family. I won’t burden my kids with that unless they want it. Others have both personal and historical value. I expect they’ll survive any purge..

I’m not sure what I would ask my dad right now. In his last few months, our conversations were pretty much the same they had been his whole life. I remember the liveliest conversations at the dinner table, or on road trips when I was a child. He loved to visit and to be visited. He was a good listener and told us the funniest stories about his childhood. He was interesting.

I guess, I’d ask him what he’s been up to since he died.

Id love to ask my dad more about his life. When I cleaned out my mom’s house I found his yearbooks and diplomas. So much i didnt know, such as he won a prestgious award when he graduated from medical school. Most of what I knew about him was filtered through my mother. Id like to hear his side of the story!

He was not close with his mother and Id like to know why. He was quite an enigma.

I wonder if I would get an honest answer from my mother. She did not seem to like her life growing up, and seemed to redefine herself when she left home. But I would ask her, how does she make carmelized onions so wonderfully? DH has been trying to do what she did, but it is lost to time. Don’t give me recipes, we know, she just had a knack!

I think I would ask my dad about his high school years. War was on, and I knew he went into the army right after he graduated (the war had just ended). Looking through his yearbooks, I saw the progession of the war’s impact at school, with the Red Cross Club ramping up, drives, and seeing the growing list of faculty, staff, and students joining up, and sometimes not coming back. But I think I would get the answer he once gave: well, yes, they all knew they would be joining up after they graduated, it’s just what everyone did. Deal with it. But I wanted to know what daily life was like.

I’d ask both of them more about their grandparents.

Elmer, there often seems to be a skip in generations’ interest in the family. That is, it is the next generation that asks questions and does research, and a generation in-between that doesn’t.

bpath, that hasn't been the case in my family. We're now at the third straight generation with no interest on my side (ranging from my parents to my adult kids) and I suspect the same on my wife's side.

My father was not a good listener, and he almost never stopped talking - especially about himself, and it got tedious very quickly. I never asked him questions because he always told me way much more than I wanted to know, but Kevin did on occasion.

At one point, our sister tape recorded some of our father's ramblings about his experiences in WWII, but I have no desire to hear them again.

I asked my mother everything I wanted to know from her fairly early on, and long before my parents passed I had nothing more to ask them. Our family has done extensive research on genealogy, mainly on my father's side, and cousins have traced our ancestry back for hundreds of years, at which point it seems meaningless to me.

My father's ancestors owned lots of land in Germany and England, and this makes is easy to trace ancestry, since records of land ownership have been preserved pretty well - more so in England than Germany. His English ancestors got here in the 17th Century (Rhode Island mostly) and then bought land when they got here. They also seemed not to be willing to marry others who were not landowners. I'm sure that many of them have been racist for generations.

If my parents were still around, I would ask my father for more detail about his life in the orphanage in the 1930s, and about the man that I later learned was a particular mentor to him (they kept in contact via letter up to the day the mentor passed away). I would ask what it was like to have his cousins shun him at school, because he was an "orphanage kid"; and just how much he saw his cousins, aunts and uncles as a child. I would also ask what he knew or remembered about his grandmother, and his own father - when was the last time he saw him? Did he ever have contact with his father's father and siblings? I would ask about his home and religious life before the orphanage, about his service during WW2, and more about his religious beliefs, since they changed at some point.

I would have similar questions for my mother. She had to stay with various relatives through the 1930s, sometimes with her sisters, sometimes without as they were taken in by others. She told me names of her parent's families, but little detail, and she really never mentioned any of them until she was in her 80s. I would like to know more about them. I don't think I would get much out of her about her own father, since she denied that he was her "real" father (he was) and their schism persisted throughout his life. Might also ask why she was willing to trash her mother's reputation with that fantasy.

From both I would want to glean as much information about their ancestors as I could!

Kinda long, but some maybe worthwhile suggestions at the end.

My dad was 28 when I was born and my mom 26, I think. My youngest brother was born when I was 5 and mom went to psych. hospital about 6 mos. later, as I neared 6, first in a city nearby and later, I think when she got TB (common at the time), in a city some miles away, where she died of it in 1942, when I was 13. She, having lost her father when young, had become good friends with dad's father, and he died shortly after she went to hosp., so dad was wondering how to break that news to her ... but when she saw him, she said 'Grandpa died, didn't he?".

Grandma, living with her sister, came to live with us.

There are many things I'd like to talk about with them, and each.

So I'd like to talk to them about those years.

Hired farmhands are often single males, but from '34 we had some young couples, the wife helping in the house - until pregnancy.

World War II started for many countries iin 1939 and when one such husband went to war, his wife made a deal with dad to have her return with small daughter to have a home with us, while helping our family.

Soon after that war dad sold the farm near here in Ontario and moved to Saskatchewan, where he farmed for much of the rest of his life. Brother left that farm to retire in Regina last year, at 90.

For those of you with parents still alive, give a thought occasionally to what you'd like to ask them - and ask it, while answers still available, and they not dealing with dementia - (yet?).

Also - partners should learn the essentials of what your partner takes care of in your family ... while assistance in learning is still at hand. Learning those essentials while grieving the loss of your loved one, is no picnic - and with the one who could have helped till yesterday - gone!

ole joyful ... 50+ years survivor of divorce

foodonastump, don't be so sure of the declassification thing. After my dad passed away my brother got his military information and a lot of it was blacked out. He was a radioman and served in the Vietnam war and Korean conflict.

I wish I had asked my mom what her life was like growing up in Japan. I don't know why I never asked her. The only thing I remember her telling me is that her youngest sister died after being crushed by a boulder.

My dad had an awful life, before he joined the military at a young age. His mother died in a mental institution in Alabama. He always said she died when he was 3 years old. Nope, she died when he was 16. His father later married but when I got my grandmother's death certificate, it says she was still married to him? I asked my dad if he wanted to know how his mom died and he told me no, that it was too sad. I never told him. His father moved with his new "wife" to New Mexico because they both had TB. My father was left to be raised by grandparents, his grandfather apparently was very abusive. I went back to visit my dad's side of the family years ago and found out that he had a baby sister that died. They told me his mother was never the same after that. All so sad. The one good thing is that maybe 10 years before my dad died he got back in touch with his cousin, who was raised by the same grandparents. Her kids had found my dad somehow. They would talk on the phone from time to time until she passed away.

For those of you with parents still alive and with decent levels of memory - give it some thought.

What would you like to know from them?

Don't wait till the they enter the eternal silence (as far as this world is concerned).

You can ask it then, as complex as you choose - but there'll be no answers.

My mom entered psych hosp when I was not quite six, a few months after the birth of the youngest of my two brothers. She died, of TB, I think, when I was 13.

Dad had a fairly large farm for those days, in Ontario, sold it and moved to Saskatchewan just after World War II, when I was 17. After my first year at university, when I went home to help on the farm for the summer, I returned to university in the fall and dad went east to marry. I was home for Christmas holidays later, but not during summers.

After university and seminary I was in Korea for several years, just after the Korean war ended in 1953, largely helping refugees get a new life going. Married an Iowa gal there - with no one from either family present.

After that almost all of my life in Ontario. Dad used to visit relatives and friends for short visits in this area over the years, and died in a car wreck near here, at 85, a few days into a visit and when we'd arranged to meet a few days later.

I was 10 when World War II started for many countries in 1939, soon our hired farmhand went off to war, and dad and I and a couple of younger brothers were the only ones to operate the farm, so I got to know quite a lot about who Dad was during those years.

ole joyful

ETA: poor memory - forgot I'd written my first contribution here earlier - almost deleted the second, but figured there were some different info and perspectives offered.

o j

I would like to know where his black sailor's knife is.

My sister found the knife! It’s in bad shape. Spring is broken.

It is more of my grandparents that I would like to ask questions. They all had such interesting lives, but I only know snippets like my maternal grandfather went west in a stagecoach as a young man, he taught himself Greek and Latin (stepfather ranoff with money, so no college), was retired by the time my mother was born and I would like to know about his first wife who died leaving him with three children to raise. My maternal grandmother was a nurse at Samaritan Hospital in Philadelphia. Several times she mentioned a doctor who was funny and I suspect she may have been in love. So, how did they get together? On the other side, my grandmother was Swedish and Granddaddy was the first in his family to leave Chincoteague Island where the family settled in the 1620s. A background check on my uncle done by the U.S. Navy during WWll traced the family back to the Norman invasion.

I would just love to hear their stories that I was too young to ask about while they were alive. Well, could have asked my mother's mom, but I guess I was busy being young and fancy free. :-(

My mother was given away when she was 4 years old. A well to do man in the community asked her mother if he could have her. My mother was illegitimate. I knew this from an early age, but now I wonder how much conversation was involved...was it discussed very much, or just given away about like you would give away a puppy?

My mother died at 97. She didn't know anyone any more. However the last words she ever said to me were, "When I was 4 years old, my mother gave me away."

That is something that never left her.

I would ask them to forgive me for any times that I'd disappointed them.

I answered before but now as I am dealing with things from my mother’s estate, I wish i knew where things came from. I have a ring that is very old and I think it belonged to my great aunt but Im not sure. Id love to know about that and many other things.

I was fortunate to reconnect with my father's sister only months before she died. When my DM threw my father out for adultery, his parents 'moved on' with their son. In 2004, prior to attending a wedding near Santa Rosa, California, I contacted my aunt and her daughters in Oakland. My aunt died before we got out there, but she and I had some long conversations by phone, and I was able to hear more family history when I visited my cousins during our trip.

My paternal grandfather thought very highly of his 'heritage'. My paternal grandmother's family was indeed illustrious, but not that n'er-do-well blowhard. My aunt had been witness to his long, selfish life and her mother's regret for marrying him. Because she was widowed, my aunt became her father's designated caretaker after his wife's death -- until he died, age 100. Hearing that family's history revealed at least one unfortunate father-to-son 'inheritance'.

Maybe it's best to speak to the women of a family -- or only late in their lives -- if you want the whole story, not the family 'line'.

For those inclined to discard their family histories or keepsakes, why not leave those options available. Let your family members decide what they want to keep or discard, uninfluenced by your feelings.

If they were aware enough to talk to me, as well as me talking to them,I would ask what it’s like where they are now.