"Record interviews to honor the lives of the people you love, to create your own archive, and to celebrate holidays and family events, such as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or graduation. The stories you collect will become treasured keepsakes that grow more valuable with each passing generation."
I couldn't agree more, candidly, as I started this project with this exact sentiment in mind. Your story may interest me and future generations, but the most likely fans of your living history will be those from future generations in your own family.
So often I hear older people say to their friends, children or grandchildren, "I wish you had known my mother (or father, or brother). You would have loved her (him, etc.). And she would have loved you too!"
Or a relative says, "You remind me so much of your grandmother! She had the same beautiful smile."
I never met my maternal grandmother as she died when my mother was only 18. My grandfather remarried my step-grandmother and they were together for almost forty years, but he would always hug me when he saw me and say, "You know why I love you? Because you remind me so much of my wife!" Of course, it was a bit mortifying that my other grandmother had to bear witness to this I thought at the time, but at one point that grandmother lived with my husband and me. She told me that she was just a girl when she met my grandfather. He was her brother's good friend in the police department.
This man I knew as Uncle Gene Tobin, who was probably the most wonderful man I have ever met. He was kind and understanding, had a great sense of humor, was beloved when he was the Chief of Police in Everett, Massachusetts and after retirement - because he was so social - became involved with the security department at the Museum of Natural History in Boston. All I remember is taking my kids there when little baby chicks were hatching from an incubator and were on display. Luckily I was tall enough to see over the heads of all the small children who were mobbing the display and could lift mine up to see too.
I am sure my children don't remember, they were small then, but I do. I was happy to see him if it was only for ten minutes. Everybody was. And my step-grandmother, Joanne, was never jealous of my grandmother either. She was a professional woman - which in those days meant a secretary for John Hancock Insurance in Boston - and she had opted not to have children when Mr. Right hadn't come along early in her life. By the time she met my grandfather she was in her late thirties and my grandfather was a rather tragic figure with thousands of dollars in medical bills from my bio-grandmother's 11 year battle with cancer.
My mother had been jealous of losing her father's attention when he remarried - she was in her second year of college, I might add - and disliked her grandmother intensely because of it. When I adored her, my mother told me she was a 'flapper and wore bright red lipstick'. My mother wore bright red lipstick, too, but somehow she didn't get the connection. Flappers? I thought they looked so cool with their beads, short hair, hats and flouncy dresses. That made my grandmother so exciting, as I knew her as an old woman, of course.
Grandma Joanne ended up living with my husband and me for a while when we lived overseas. learned from my grandmother that she wasn't jealous of my bio-grandmother. She'd been 12 years younger than my grandfather and that was a different lifetime that had nothing to do with her. They were happily married a long time and had a good life together. He deserved it and so did she.
It was sad to see this woman who had been so full of life and expectations lose her mental faculties, as it was the first experience I had as an adult with death. My father died three months later, which was a terribly distressing time for all of us. I still think back and wish I had spent more time with him. How I wish I had asked him about his life, his dreams, his political beliefs, but I was too self-centered at the time, like many young (and old) people. I
I hope you write your stories or record them or preserve them on video. You won't regret it.
