Oral Histories: Preserving Your Family's Stories

My mother and I would sit outside (weather permitting), enjoying a cocktail and she would dictate her story while I keyboarded as fast as I could into my laptop. We didn't have enough time for all the stories, but important dates and times, courtship, early marriage, moving a lot has been preserved. My mother, age 85, died suddenly (isn't it always) in New Orleans 2005, we had just had my daughters wedding. We didn't get to share any last words but we had shared a lifetime over the five years she lived with me.

This is a great tip...one I used with my Mother before she died back in July 2000....Mom was in a nursing home and it was hard to visit because she complained about every pain she had. I came up with the idea of "Interviewing Mom" and she LOVED it...I would take her a McDonald's Happy meal(she loved them) or a pizza and her Diet Pepsi and she was in heaven...She was important...she had my complete attention...she loved it. I was able to visit with her and I was rewarded with stories of her life that I would never had heard.