Every family has the same regret, phrased the same way: I wish I had asked while she was still here. This guide is the afternoon that prevents it. You need a phone, a grandparent, two hours, and the list below.
Before you sit down
Record it. Ask permission, then put the phone on the table and forget about it. Do not take notes; notes make it an interview. You want a conversation.
Bring photographs. Old photographs are the best interview tool ever invented. A face triggers a name, a name triggers a house, a house triggers a whole decade.
Go alone, or with one other person. Groups turn into family arguments about who is right. You want one voice, uninterrupted.
Do not correct them. If Grandpa says the village was Guimarães and you are sure it was Braga, let it go. You can check later. Correcting closes people down.
The questions
You will not get through all forty. That is fine. Start with the section that fits the mood, and follow whatever lights them up.
Their own childhood
- Where exactly were you born — the house, the street, the town?
- What is the first thing you remember?
- What did the house you grew up in look like? Who slept where?
- What did your family eat on an ordinary day? And on a feast day?
- How did you get to school, and how far did you go with it?
- What did children do for fun where you grew up?
- Were you ever really scared as a child? Of what?
- Who was the strictest person in the house? Who was the softest?
Their parents
- What were your parents' full names, including your mother's maiden name?
- Where were each of them from?
- How did they meet?
- What did your father do for a living? And your mother?
- What did your mother always say? What did your father always say?
- What did your parents argue about?
- What did they want for you that they never had themselves?
Their grandparents and beyond
- What do you remember about your grandparents — even a smell, a hand, a kitchen?
- Where did they come from? Did anyone ever mention a village or a country further back?
- Did anyone in the family emigrate, or arrive from somewhere else? When, and why?
- Are there relatives we lost touch with? Which branch?
- Was there ever a family scandal that nobody talks about?
Love and marriage
- How did you meet Grandma / Grandpa?
- What did your parents think of the match?
- What was the wedding like — where, who came, what did you wear?
- What was the hardest year of the marriage? What got you through it?
Work, war and hard times
- What was your first job, and what did it pay?
- Was there a war, a dictatorship, a revolution or a crisis in your lifetime? What did it change at home?
- Did anyone in the family have to leave, hide, or fight?
- What was the poorest the family ever was? And the moment things got better?
Faith, tradition and food
- What did the family do on Sundays?
- Is there a dish only our family makes? Who taught it to whom?
- What traditions have we lost that you miss?
- What names repeat in the family, and why?
Objects and papers
- Is there an object in this house that came from your parents or grandparents?
- Are there letters, documents, medals, a family Bible, a passport from the old country?
- Who has the oldest photographs, and who is in them?
Looking back
- What are you proudest of?
- What do you wish you had done differently?
- What do you want your great-grandchildren to know about you?
- Who in the family should I talk to next, and about what?
- Is there anything you have never told anyone that you would like to be remembered?
Afterwards
Write down the names the same day. Full names, maiden names, places, approximate years. Memory of a conversation fades faster than you expect; the recording is your backup, not your notes.
Put the names in the tree that evening, with the story attached to the person it belongs to — not in a document somewhere, but on Grandpa's own card, where his grandchildren will find it. Kindomus keeps a story, a photograph and an audio-worthy quote on each person, and lets you send the open questions ("who was Tia Amélia married to?") straight to the relative Grandpa pointed you towards.
Go back. The second visit is always better than the first. They will have remembered things, found photographs, and — this is the real secret — realised that someone actually wants to know.