Broaching a subject to my grandparents

Post Reply New Topic

Two and a half years ago I sat down one night and watched a '30s film called Make Way for Tomorrow, where an elderly couple low on money in the Depression are forced to live with their families, often suffering the generation gap with their younger relatives and often not seeing eye-to-eye or living in the background of each scene, finding it tough to keep the companionship they used to have between each other.

(Film spoiler alert in the next two paragraphs!)

The final scene follows a small build-up where it turns out they will have to live apart for the rest of their lives. They depart on a train platform and say goodbye for what may be the last time ever.

It was about 1am and I was sat alone watching this in my room, and I was howling. Howling with tears. It's a devastating film; Orson Welles said it could make a stone weep.

As I was getting through my tears I decided that I had to approach my grandparents and ask them to leave something for me. If they hadn't long at all to live now, I would be relying on my memories with them, photographs, cards and little more. They wrote to us on how they found the Second World War a handful of years back and I was hugely appreciative although I don't remember ever telling them so. I want to ask them to write for me if possible. I'm not sure what about. I think perhaps how they met and fell in love with one another, what's kept them going, things around those lines and I'd be delighted with suggestions. However I don't exactly want to set them a school essay. And of course, we have to be careful with the unspoken message behind asking my grandparents to write for me. I don't want to remind them they're not getting older, and I don't want it to be deathbed text: them "signing out" from the world with a message to me. I just want to have their words, on important things to them, us and me.

I hope some see the thin line I straddle in getting this forward. Only one of my grandparents, my granddad, father's father, is dead. It's been over 10 years and I wish he could see I'm doing OK now, because I was a painful 10-year-old at the time.

My remaining grandparents are in their mid-to-late 80s. Both my grandmothers left school at 14, but still became intelligent, independent and hugely principled people. My mother's mother I've only appreciated properly in the past several years, such an intelligent woman and even today she could beat almost anyone else into a cocked hat in wit and intellect. My mother's father is similar and became a doctor, played squash until he was 80 and is still one of the most prolific broadsheet letter writers around, a politically active man. My father's mother has an incredible moral rigour, worked in the market until her 80s and though not as sharp as she used to be, is still active and fascinating. They were all brought up in Mancunian slums, the grandmother just mentioned moved from them to the house she still lives in which she bought for a few hundred quid. She went from that to getting her children into university and my father into Cambridge. They are an incredible set of people.

For Christmas this year I don't want their gifts so much as them finally writing about their life for me. But how can I broach it as well and sensitively as possible?

Thanks everybody for reading.

Say, "Hey ya old farts! Write me a bedtime story or six! And hurry up before ya croak!"

Or,

You could say something like, "I'd like to get to know you both better, will you write me some stuff about the interesting bits of your life as a Christmas present to me? Some of the things that happened to you and how you handled them. Maybe it'll make me smarter for when I have grandkids."
And maybe just not mention that you want it pronto before they kick the bucket.

Keep bugging them, I bet once they start writing they'll write a lot.

I just saw 'Make Way For Tomorrow' on account of wavecannon's suggestion. It was pretty good. I mean, I didn't cry, but it was okay. Reminded me of similar films I'd seen from that era like 'It's A Wonderful Life' and 'The Best Years of Our Lives.' I saw it on YouTube, BTW.

OP, I know someone who asked their grandfather if it was all right to listen to his wwII and other stories while recording his voice with a tape recorder. He was happy to do it. After, someone took the time to edit them a little and transferred the recording onto 2 CD's. He'd be about your grandparents' age - he knew his family loved him, valued and wanted his perspective and stories to live on after he passes.

I'm sure it's quite similar to those. It's a very classic and classy format that may come off as mushy, I know others who haven't been particularly affected by it, but it hit me. It's just a vignette to my intentions in this thread though.

There wasn't a cat's chance in hell I was going to say that sort of thing, and I hope you knew that . . . besides the "when I have grandkids" bit (I don't know what I'll be doing after this university year let alone procreating). I think that simplified request should work very well though. I'm going to the football with my grandmother tomorrow and hopefully it'll be a possible mention then.

Despite me not having that sort of equipment it really is a fantastic idea. To have voice and all as well, on top of the stories. It should be a tradition for family members to do this sort of thing. My grandparents were teenagers in the war, just getting by, but they still have interesting stories. My father's mother thought WWII was a great lot of fun, and she remembers going to plenty of dances and perhaps seeing parts of Manchester blitzed on her way home and not thinking much of it. Rose-hued glasses maybe. Always some fantastic stories to be told there, and not the generic ones you'd expect either.

Several years ago I gave my mother a notebook full of all the questions I could think of about her earlier life and about the rest of our family (for example people I'd never gotten to know because they were dead). Not that she had to answer *all* the questions, I told her just to pick out the ones she wanted to write about.

OK this was probably 8 years ago... last night on the phone she said that instead of doing crossword puzzles, maybe she'd start working on that.

The idea came from a book I came across while browsing through a bookstore, something like "Ask Grandpa" or whatever, with questions on each page and space below to write. I didn't quite want to use that exact book because iirc, it had unattractive, cartoon-y illustrations, and the questions were (by necessity, of course) not personalized for my mother and our family.

Maybe something like that?