30 Questions to Ask Before They're Gone
This is the list we used with my grandfather in the last year of his life. Ask six to eight per sitting rather than all thirty, record the answers as audio rather than writing them down, and if you only get one question, make it the last one on the list.
Key takeaways
- Ask six to eight questions per sitting, not thirty. The good answers come after the pause, and tired people stop pausing.
- Record it. A written answer keeps the facts; a recording keeps the voice, and the voice is what the family plays back.
- Question 30 is the one almost every family says they are most grateful for. If you only get one, make it that one.
- Move the recordings off the phone that made them — a single handset is the most commonly lost family archive there is.
My grandfather was eighty-eight and we all knew roughly how much time was left, and nobody said so out loud. I brought a list of questions to his kitchen table on a Sunday, mostly because I could not think of anything else to bring. We got through seven of them that afternoon. It took three more Sundays to finish, and it is the best decision I have ever made.
What surprised me was not the big answers. It was that he had a whole first half of a life none of us had ever asked about — a job I did not know he had, a girl before my grandmother, a year he does not talk about. He was not hiding any of it. Nobody had asked.
The reason these stories disappear is almost never that someone refused to tell them. It is that nobody sat down and asked while there was still time.
How to ask
Five things make the difference between a stilted interview and an afternoon they enjoy:
- Say why. Not "I want to interview you" — that makes people perform. Try: "I realised I don't know half your life and I want to, before I lose the chance to ask." Almost nobody says no to that.
- Ask, then be quiet. The first answer is the summary. The real one arrives four or five seconds into the silence, if you can bear to leave it there.
- Follow instead of advancing. "What happened next?" and "who else was there?" are worth more than the next question on the list. Treat these thirty as doors, not as a schedule.
- Don't correct them. Dates will be wrong. Let them be wrong. You are collecting a person, not a record.
- Put something in their hands. A photo album, a box of letters, a dish they made. Memory lives in objects, and people who go blank in a chair will talk for an hour holding a photograph.
The 30 questions
They are grouped so you can take one group per sitting. The line under each question is the reason it is on the list — you don't need to read that part out.
Where they come from · questions 1–6
- 01
What's your earliest memory — the very first thing you can picture?
An easy opener nobody has ever asked them. It sets the pace: specific, unhurried, no wrong answers.
- 02
What did the house you grew up in smell like?
Smell reaches memories that "tell me about your childhood" never gets near. Expect the room, the neighbours and the winter to arrive with it.
- 03
Who did you look up to when you were ten, and what happened to them?
Introduces a whole cast of people your family has never heard of, and usually one who mattered enormously.
- 04
What did your parents argue about?
Tells you what that household was short of — money, work, faith, each other — and where a lot of your family's habits started.
- 05
What's a story about our family that you were told, but never saw yourself?
Catches the generation above them. These are the stories that vanish first, because only one person is still carrying them.
- 06
What were you afraid of as a child that you never told anyone?
A small, safe admission. It gives them permission for the honest answers later on.
The people who shaped them · questions 7–11
- 07
When did you first fall in love, and how did you know?
Ask it before you ask about their marriage. The first one is usually the better story, and they are usually delighted someone asked.
- 08
What do you remember about the day you met? Not the wedding — the day you met.
Weddings have been retold so often they've gone smooth. The day they met is still in original condition.
- 09
Who's the friend you lost touch with, and what happened?
Nearly everyone has one. It's often the answer that stays with them for days afterwards.
- 10
What did you learn about being a parent that nobody warned you about?
Moves them from telling stories to handing something down — and it's the one your own children will want later.
- 11
Is there someone you never forgave? Do you still think about it?
Ask it gently and be ready for a no. When it's a yes, it explains decades of things you had noticed but never understood.
Work and the middle years · questions 12–16
- 12
What was your first job, and what did it pay?
Concrete and easy, and it dates their whole life for you: what a week's wage bought, what it did not.
- 13
Was there a moment when your life could have gone another way entirely?
Nearly always produces a story no one in the family has heard — a job not taken, a country not moved to, a person not married.
- 14
What were you doing when you were the age I am now?
The question that changes how you see them. They were not always the older person at the table.
- 15
What was the hardest year of your life, and what got you through it?
Ask both halves. The second half is the part your family will need one day.
- 16
What did you want to walk away from, and why did you stay?
Gets at endurance without asking anyone to be noble about it. Usually the most honest answer of the afternoon.
The harder ones · questions 17–21
- 17
What's something you did that nobody in this family knows about?
Said lightly, it lands as an invitation rather than an interrogation. Let them decide how far to go.
- 18
What do you regret — and what do people assume you regret that you don't?
The second half is the interesting one. It's where they tell you what they actually chose.
- 19
Who have you lost, and what do you still miss about them?
Older people are often relieved to talk about their dead. Most of us stopped asking years ago, and the silence is lonelier than the subject.
- 20
When were you truly afraid, and what of?
Wartime, hospitals, a bad night on a road. Rarely offered without being asked.
- 21
Is there something you want said at your funeral — or something you'd rather nobody said?
Practical, and a real kindness to whoever ends up planning it. Most people have an opinion and no one has ever asked for it.
What they'd pass on · questions 22–26
- 22
What do you believe now that you didn't believe at thirty?
Shows you the whole arc of a person in one answer, which no list of facts ever does.
- 23
What's the best advice you were ever given, and did you take it?
The "did you take it" is what stops this being a fridge magnet.
- 24
What do you hope we remember about you?
Ask it while they can still answer it. Families quote this one for generations.
- 25
If you could sit with one person for one more hour, who would it be, and what would you ask them?
Tells you who is still missing from their life — and quietly tells you what they'd want from an hour like the one you're having.
- 26
What would you want to say to your great-grandchildren, who'll never meet you?
The one worth recording rather than writing. Children who never met them will hear their voice saying their name.
The small things nobody writes down · questions 27–30
- 27
How exactly do you make it? Say the measurements out loud.
Whatever dish is theirs. Handfuls and "until it looks right" are the parts that are lost forever, and the parts you'll want back.
- 28
Hum or sing the song that was playing when you were twenty.
Half of them will refuse and then do it anyway. Nobody has ever regretted having that recording.
- 29
Tell me the joke you always tell.
The laugh matters more than the joke. That sound is genuinely hard to remember accurately, and impossible to reconstruct.
- 30
Say my name, and tell me one thing you love about me.
Ask this one last, and make sure it is recording. Of everything families keep, this is the clip they play back most.
If time is short
Sometimes there isn't a series of Sundays. If you have one visit, or one afternoon in a hospital room, ask these five in this order and let everything else go:
- 14 — what were you doing when you were the age I am now? (easy, warm, opens them up)
- 19 — who have you lost, and what do you still miss about them?
- 15 — what was the hardest year, and what got you through it?
- 24 — what do you hope we remember about you?
- 30 — say my name, and tell me one thing you love about me.
If they tire before the end, skip to thirty. It takes eleven seconds and it is the one you will keep.
How to record the answers
Writing them down keeps the information. Recording them keeps the person. Six months from now you will remember what they said; what fades first, and fastest, is exactly how they said it.
- Audio beats video. A camera makes almost everyone perform. A phone lying face up on the table is forgotten within two minutes.
- Say the date and their name at the start of every recording, out loud. It costs three seconds and it is the only labelling that never gets separated from the file.
- One file per sitting is fine. Don't stop and start — the pauses and the tea and the dog barking are part of what you're keeping.
- Ask first. "Do you mind if I record this so I don't lose it?" Almost everyone says yes, and being asked is part of why the answers get honest.
- Back it up the same evening. Not next week. The recordings families lose are almost always lost to a broken or upgraded phone.
What to do with the answers
This is the step most people never get to, and it is the one that decides whether any of it survives. Four voice memos on one person's phone is not an archive. It's a single point of failure, and after a few years nobody else in the family even knows the recordings exist.
Put the audio, the photographs you looked at together and the stories in one place the whole family can open, and then tell them it's there. That's the entire job. Whether you use a shared drive, a folder everyone has the password to, or a memorial page, the test is the same: could your cousin find it in ten years without asking you?
A Lumestone memorial page is built for exactly this — the voice recordings, the photos, the life story and the small things, kept together and opened by anyone who has the link, or by a small engraved plaque at the grave. It works just as well while someone is still here as it does afterwards.
If they've already passed
Then ask the questions to the people who knew them. Their brother, their oldest friend, the neighbour who was there for thirty years. They hold answers your immediate family has never heard, and they are usually moved to be asked.
Questions 3, 5, 9, 13 and 19 work almost unchanged — just point them at the person you've lost. And record those conversations too. Everyone you ask is also someone whose voice is worth keeping.
Somewhere to keep their answers
Voice, photos and the stories nobody wrote down — in one place the whole family can open, now and in fifty years.
Create their memorial →Frequently asked questions
How many of these questions should I ask in one sitting?
Six to eight. Around forty minutes is where most people start to tire, and a tired answer is a short answer. Three separate afternoons will give you far more than one long session.
How do I record the answers?
The voice memo app on your phone is enough. Lay the phone face up on the table between you, say the date and their name at the start, and then forget it's there. Video is lovely but it makes most people perform; audio makes them talk.
What if they don't want to answer something?
Leave it. Say you were only curious, and move to the next one. Some questions come back on their own an hour later, and those are usually the ones worth waiting for.
Which question should I ask if there's only time for one?
Number thirty: say my name, and tell me one thing you love about me. Of everything families record, that's the clip they play back most.
What do I do with the answers afterwards?
Get them off the phone that recorded them. Audio files on a single handset are the most commonly lost family record there is. Put the recordings, the photos and the stories in one place the whole family can open — and tell the family where it is.
Is it too late if they've already passed away?
No. Ask the questions to the people who knew them instead. Siblings, old friends and neighbours hold answers nobody in the immediate family has ever heard, and their voices are worth recording too.
You have the questions. This is where the answers live.
Their voice, the photographs, the stories nobody wrote down — one page your family can still open in fifty years, reachable at the grave through a small engraved plaque.
Create a memorial page →