Recently, one of our clients lost her grandmother after a short illness. While the family mourns her passing, they are comforted by the knowledge that over the past year they captured much of her life story in eight hours of audio tape, recorded in a series of casual conversations over meals. In the tapes, the sprightly 90-year-old is gently coaxed into remembering the early years of her marriage, telling funny stories about her kids and almost unknowingly revealing the values by which she lived her life. The recordings, and the book they will generate, are certain to be a family treasure, a way of keeping this grandmother very much alive for future generations.

As we wind our way through middle age, many of us find ourselves wanting to preserve the stories of our parents' or grandparents' lives, but not knowing where to begin. Some of our elders are willing to share their past, others, for a variety of reasons, are not as open. (I have been known to resort to clandestine videotaping when my parents proved too shy to tell their funniest stories to a camera.) But regardless of the degree of enthusiasm your subject has for the project, certain pieces of factual  information should be relatively easy to elicit from even the most reluctant elder. So may we suggest that you start with "just the facts, ma'am". (Okay, if you don't get the reference, you probably have plenty of time to do this later - because you must be under 40.) If you don't already know this information about your living relatives, see if you can get them to answer the following questions:

• Birth, marriage and death dates and places for each of his or her family members, as far back as he/she can remember
• Address of every place your subject ever lived, and dates of residence there
• Names and dates of schools attended and degrees received
• Names, dates and locations of every employer, along with job title and basic responsibilities
• Any record of military service, postings, awards etc.
• Names of best friends from childhood, college and adulthood.

We take for granted that we will always remember these things, but really, we don't. I can't remember the address of my first Cincinnati apartment from 1979, and on a recent trip to the town of my birth my mother had a hard time sorting out which house we had lived in which year. So it's never too early to think about starting this file for every family member, including yourself, and just adding to it as the years progress.

Plus, these simple, non-threatening pieces of factual information could form the branches from which to hang more detailed (and more interesting) stories as your subject warms to the idea of talking about his or her experiences. Why not give it a try?

~ Kristi