How can a parent’s life story be preserved before those memories are lost?
As we go through life and mature, things and processes naturally change, and we consider (as we should) that our parents getting older is just a normal phase in life.
But as life goes by and we are drawn into and absorbed in our everyday internal chaos at home or at work, we rarely pause to note the questions we’ve been meaning to ask them.
As a cloud vanishing on a windy day, the little voice in our heads reminds us to ask mum how she ended up working in the Channel Islands for almost a decade, but it will probably disappear the moment a new WhatsApp notification appears on our smartphone.
Life carries on, and thoughts come and go.
With that comes the brutal realisation that time is passing, that mum’s or dad’s illness has progressed, and that it’s perhaps now too late for starting those conversations.
The uncomfortable truth is that memories are a fragile thing. Illness, old age, or memory loss may affect our parents' ability to give us the answers we’ve been craving for years.
In my work writing people’s life stories, I’ve seen firsthand how easily important life stories disappear when nobody asks the questions and preserves the vast knowledge already there.
If you came across the article and are looking for information on how to start preserving your parents’ life stories and legacies before it’s too late, here are some useful guidelines to help you on this journey.
Decide between a structured or unstructured approach
The most obvious advice would be not to postpone talking about the past and your parents’ recollections of events, whether before you were born or specific chapters of your childhood.
You can approach this either in a well-organised, structured way, prepared with topics, timelines, certain specific episodes you want to discuss, or leave the conversation to flow naturally and be spontaneous.
If you choose the first, more organised side, be upfront with them about what you want to achieve in the first place and whether they are happy to join you on this journey.
You can either set a specific date and time for a chat that you could record or let it be more impromptu and use some reminiscing techniques next time you visit them to go back in time, whether by looking at old photos, talking about past events, or cooking a family meal that instantly brings back memories from when you were little.
There is really no wrong choice here. Whichever approach you decide on won’t matter at the end of the day, and even a blended method can work for some people.
The great thing about reaching out to your parents might be that, on a random Tuesday afternoon, you receive a message with a photograph or a short text they wanted to share with you as a result of your involvement and interest. This can be a great conversation starter for your next visit.
Record your parent’s stories and memories
The main recommendation I keep making, which I hope will make everyone’s efforts totally worthwhile, is to record your parents’ voices. With their permission, you can really go back in time and engage with their memories while keeping your phone on the table. By now, we are all used to the phone sitting on the table or near us.
This should not be too distracting, and the conversation can become an extremely valuable memory that nothing can ever replace. Short video clips are even better and can create an immersive experience over time. With advances in cameras and lenses, we can already recreate videos as 3D or spatial scenes. The more you capture now, the more you will be able to preserve.
When, in ten or twenty years from now, you open the file and start listening to the way they spoke, the things they’ve told you are something that turns a memory into a personal story.
Recording their voice or video is one thing, but to ensure this information lasts, please back it up and store it securely so it is not deleted by mistake or lost if your phone is lost.
Where to start and what questions should you ask your parents about their life?
Just as with the structured vs unstructured approach, which depends on many factors such as your parents and your availability, as well as your interests of the past, you can either take the linear approach of talking about their life story, i.e. from cradle to retirement, or a looser version where you actually want to talk and find out more about a specific segment of the past that you deeply care about.
I tend to think of this as an episodic approach to life storytelling, where you want to uncover specific life moments that happened, for example, uncovering more about your relations with your aunt and that side of the family, or what life was like for them living on the farm in the Cornish countryside.
Episodic life storytelling can also make it easier for your parents to start these discussions and ease them into the process.
One way to start such a discussion would be to bring sensory references as conversation and memory starters. Whether that is a discussion about a favourite food they had while living on the farm and the smell of a freshly baked loaf of bread, or talk about the sound that the strong and heavy farming machinery used to make in the past – it can all be used to stimulate a discussion about pastimes.
Use photographs and personal objects to unlock memories
Another avenue to explore, especially if you notice that your parents engage positively in these discussions, is to look through photographs or other keepsakes.
Oftentimes, we see photographs simply as 2D images, missing so much information along the way and forgetting that each one was taken in a particular context that we simply cannot understand without asking follow-up questions.
Here is a list of questions you could ask your parents:
Who is in the photo?
Who took the photo?
What was the connection of the people with your parent?
What happened before or after the photo?
A good, perhaps joint, exercise would be to write down roughly the dates or who was in the photo.
Apart from photographs, you can also do this with other reference objects. The thing that keeps coming back to me (should write a separate blog on this!) is your parents’ good old cookbooks, if they still keep them.
I keep regretting every time that I didn’t keep my mum’s handwritten cooking planner with all the traditional meals and the ones I had as a child. Her homemade koftas and spinach were truly a perfect autumnal lunch for me after returning from school.
If you regularly visit your parents, you can ask which objects around the house hold special importance to them and why. These can include objects such as medals, books, jewellery, or pieces of furniture.
You can also think of other items that will hold immense emotional importance in the future and could transport you back to your childhood – just like the cookbook I mentioned earlier. Other surprising items include phonebooks and old school card records.
Talking about the big and difficult topics
Talking about difficult topics can be challenging – and regardless of how close we are with someone, in this case our parents, we should never force it if we feel they are not willing to unpack the complicated parts of their lives.
There are many reasons why opening such highly charged topics can be challenging for both your parents and you.
I would advise, if possible, that unlike reminiscing about the “good old days”, which would be appropriate to approach in an unstructured way, in this case to come bit more prepared, both in terms of what it is you want to find out, how to be sensitive to the people in the story as well as to your parent, and how you could best process the information internally.
Talking about tough topics would never be as easy as discussing the neighbours next door getting tipsy on Christmas Day, but we also have to bear in mind that one day the answer to the question about your biological parent, or about how difficult it was for a single parent to raise you, will be gone – forever.
I suggest this be approached with sensitivity because some of the stories might resurface trauma or unhealed emotions. Sometimes, as a person interested in the past, you might find it difficult to process this new information. Therefore, approach any touchy areas with a bit of pre-planning and pay attention to whether your parent actually wants to continue the conversation. Be prepared to leave a subject alone if they don't.
I’ve covered talking about the big issues in a separate blog post.
Memories are primarily a subjective interpretation of what we believe happened. When we lose our parents for various reasons, we not only lose the memories of their lives but also a much richer context for understanding how life unfolded through their eyes.
It is easier to uncover the bare facts like dates, names and life events and chronology, but to preserve your parents' memories, we have a more difficult and satisfying job, which is about preserving their worldviews and life experiences through their own interpretation.
If you would like help preserving a parent’s life story, this is exactly what I do! I work with individuals and families through FirstMemoir to record their memories in a series of interviews and turn them into a private written memoir. You can find out more about how I work and the process on my website.
About the author
Andreja Bogdanovski is a memoir writer, personal biographer and founder of FirstMemoir.
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