Questions to ask your parents before they die

These questions to ask your parents before they die are written for a son or daughter whose mother or father is old or ill. A parent in that state often has more to say than the family expects and less strength to say it at one sitting, so the questions are short and grouped by period of life, to be asked a few at a time. None of them has to be asked at all. Choose the ones that fit your parent, leave out any that would weigh on them, and let the conversation go where they take it.

If your parent is well and you are planning a long conversation at a holiday or a birthday, questions to ask your parents about their lives has a fuller list. Questions to ask your grandparents gives a set the grandchildren can ask, including a short one for young children.

Before you ask: what makes it easier

• Keep each sitting short. Twenty minutes is often enough, and an hour is a long time for someone who is ill. Smithsonian Education's guide to family interviews advises ending at the first sign of tiredness and coming back another day.
• Start with what they already like to tell. A story you have heard many times is an easy way in, and it often leads to one you have never heard.
• Bring something to hold. An old photograph, a letter or a wedding album brings back names and places that a question alone does not.
• Ask one question at a time, and wait. A pause is often the parent remembering. Let them finish before you ask the next thing.
• Let the parent choose. Show them the list and ask which questions they would like to answer. Some would rather write their answers, or tell them to a grandchild who writes them down, and a brother or sister can take some of the sittings.

Questions about their early years

Childhood is usually the easiest place to begin. The answers hold the names and places the rest of the family will want later.

1. Where were you born, and what is the first home you remember?
2. Who lived in the house with you when you were small?
3. What were your mother and father like when you were a child?
4. What did your father do for a living, and your mother?
5. Which of your grandparents did you know, and what do you remember of them?
6. Is there a dish from your childhood that still tastes of home?
7. What was Shabbos, a Sunday or a holiday like in your house?
8. Who was your closest friend as a child, and what did you do together?

Questions about growing up and leaving home

9. What do you remember about school, and which teacher do you still think of?
10. As a young person, what did you dream of doing?
11. What was your first job, and what did you do with your first wages?
12. When did you leave your parents' home, and where did you go?
13. Who taught you the most when you were young, and what did they teach you?
14. Was there a hard time in your youth that shaped you?
15. What did your parents hope you would become, and how did it turn out?

Questions about marriage and raising a family

16. How did you meet my mother (or my father), and what did you notice first?
17. What do you remember about your wedding day?
18. Where was your first home together, and what was in it?
19. What do you remember about the day each of your children was born?
20. What was the hardest year for the family, and what got you through it?
21. Which year was the happiest, and why?
22. What do you remember about me as a small child that I would not know?
23. What do you hope your grandchildren will remember about you?

Questions about their own parents and grandparents

These questions reach back to the generation before. A parent may be the only one in the family who knew them, or who heard about them from someone who did. Ask for each name in full, and how it was spelled.

24. What were your parents' full names, and your mother's family name before she married?
25. Where were your parents born, and what was the town called then?
26. How did your family come to live where you grew up, and who came first?
27. Did anyone in the family change their name, and what was it before?
28. Were there aunts or uncles you never met, and do you know what became of them?
29. Where are your parents and grandparents buried?
30. Is there a cousin who knows more about the family than we do?

Answers like these lead to records, such as a passenger list, a naturalization file, a gravestone or a register in the town. Write each answer down exactly as it was said, with any doubt in it: "somewhere near Lublin, I think" is more useful kept as it is than tidied into a certainty. Questions to ask your grandparents has a longer set aimed at records, and family history interview questions shows how to phrase each one so that it leads somewhere.

Questions about what they have learned

Some parents welcome these questions, and some find them too large. Offer them, and follow the parent's lead.

31. What are you most proud of?
32. What did you learn from your own parents that you tried to pass on?
33. Is there anything you would do differently?
34. What do you believe in, and has that changed over the years?
35. What has given you the most joy?
36. Is there something you have always wanted to tell us and never found the moment for?
37. What would you like each of your grandchildren to know?
38. Is there a blessing you would like to give your children?

Practical and end-of-life questions

Many parents are relieved to have these settled, and they are easiest to ask as ordinary questions on an ordinary day. Spread them over two or three sittings, and write the answers down as well as recording them.

Names

39. What is your full name as it appears on your papers, and was it ever spelled another way?
40. What is your Hebrew name, and what were your father's and your mother's Hebrew names?
41. Who were you named after?
42. Whose yahrzeits do you keep, and on which dates?
43. Which names are on the family's gravestones, and in which cemeteries?

Where things are

44. Where are your will, your insurance papers and the deeds to the house and the cemetery plot?
45. Who is your lawyer, and your accountant, and whom should we call first?
46. Which banks and accounts do you have, and is anything owed to you or by you?
47. Where are your birth certificate, your ketubah or marriage certificate, and your naturalization papers?
48. Where are the old photographs and letters, and who is in them?
49. Is there anything in the house with a story the family should know before it is given away?

Wishes

Ask these only if your parent raises them, or makes clear they want to talk. Many parents do, and are glad to be asked. Others do not, and that is their choice.

50. Who should make decisions about your care if you cannot, and have you written it down?
51. Is there a rav, a minister or a friend you would like us to call?
52. Have you chosen where you would like to be buried?
53. Is there anything you would like done, or not done, that we should know?

The documents that record decisions about care differ from state to state, so ask a lawyer which ones your parent needs. In observant families, ask your rav as well. The Rabbinical Council of America has its own health care proxy, and urges that decisions made under such documents include the guidance of a rav. The Beth Din of America advises a halachic will beside the civil one, because Jewish law and civil law divide an estate differently, and recommends working with a beis din or a rav together with the family's lawyer.

Names and blessings in frum families

The Hebrew name matters in practice. A man is called to the Torah by his Hebrew name and his father's, and a gravestone gives the Hebrew name with the father's name, so the children will need both. When the family prays for someone who is ill, the custom is to use the mother's name instead, as in Dovid ben Sarah or Esther bas Chana. Ask your parent for their own Hebrew name and both parents' names, and for the names of their grandparents, which are often the names the grandchildren carry.

Some frum families take great care not to alarm a parent who is gravely ill, and some never raise death with them at all. In such a home the questions about wishes wait until the parent raises them, and some are never asked. How to speak with a parent who is very ill, and what to say if they ask, are questions to ask your rav.

Some parents want to leave a tzava'ah, an ethical will: a letter to the children and grandchildren with the values they hope the family will keep and their blessings, and sometimes requests about customs. The tradition is an old one, and Yaakov's blessings to his sons at the end of his life are often given as its model. A parent who wants to write one may need only a quiet hour and someone to write it down. How to write a legacy letter has a template, and covers the ethical will as well as the modern form.

Legacy projects in hospice and palliative care

A legacy project is something a person near the end of life makes or leaves for the family, so that something of them stays with the people they love. Hospices commonly offer one to patients well enough to take part, usually made with trained social workers and volunteers and at no cost to the family. Ask the hospice team what they offer. A family can also make one together, with the grandchildren gathering photographs and stories while the parent tells them who is who.

Legacy project ideas

• A letter, or a recorded message, for each child or grandchild.
• An album of the photographs that matter most, with the names written in.
• A box of the objects they treasured, each with a note of its story.
• Favorite recipes, prayers or songs, written down in the parent's words or recorded in their voice.
• A recorded conversation about their life, typed out and edited into a short document for the family.

The last is the method of dignity therapy, which some palliative care teams offer. A trained clinician, often a psychologist, social worker, chaplain or nurse, records a conversation with the patient about their life and what they want the family to know, and has it typed and edited into a document. The patient reads the finished document and gives it to whoever they choose.

How to record the answers

Record every sitting, even a short one, and even if your parent's voice is tired. A recording keeps the voice as well as the words, and the way a parent says a name is often how it was said in the family. How to record a parent's stories goes further.

1. Ask your parent whether you may record, and say who will hear it.
2. Sit close, in a quiet room with nothing else playing. Record a minute first and listen back.
3. At the start, say the date, who is speaking and who is asking, and name the file the same way, with the date first.
4. Ask your parent to spell each name and town, and write it down beside the recording, with who said it.
5. Keep at least two copies, in places as far apart as practical, and check once a year that they still open, as the Library of Congress advises. Give a copy to each brother and sister.
6. Have the recording typed out. Mark anything you could not make out, and leave your parent's words as they said them.

If your parent tires quickly, record a few minutes at a time and keep every piece. A short list of what each recording covers, kept with the copies, lets the family find a story years later.

When a parent cannot answer

Some parents are too ill to talk for long, and some no longer remember. The stories can still be gathered. Ask your parent's brothers and sisters and their oldest friends, and the cousins who heard the same stories from another side of the family. Sit with your parent and the photographs anyway, since a face or a song can bring back a name that a question cannot, and the time together counts whatever is said.

The papers in the house hold much of what a parent can no longer say. A ketubah gives the date and place of the wedding and the names of the bride's and groom's fathers, and a letter in Yiddish may name the family's town. Keep everything until someone has read it; what to do with old photos and family papers explains how.

What the answers lead to

The names, towns and dates a parent mentions in these conversations are what the archives need. A commissioned book starts from them, and the recordings become part of the family's history. Zichronos researches a family in the archives that hold its records, then publishes its history as a finished hardcover book, and a parent's recorded memories sit in it beside the records they led to. Family history book examples shows what such a book holds, Inside a book shows its pages, what a family history book costs sets out what each kind of service includes, and How we work sets out the steps.

How to write your mother's or father's life story covers what a family can write from the recordings itself. For a parent who is well, with a birthday coming, gifts for a 70th or 75th birthday and meaningful 80th birthday gifts start from the same conversations, and family stories and keepsakes has more guides on keeping a family's stories.

Sources: Smithsonian Education's guide to family folklore interviews; the Library of Congress on keeping personal audio recordings; My Jewish Learning on the father's and the mother's name, ethical wills and the ketubah text; the Beth Din of America on the halakhic will; the Rabbinical Council of America on its health care proxy; UPMC's Palliative and Supportive Institute on legacy projects; Fitchett and colleagues on dignity therapy, BMC Palliative Care, 2015; "Legacy in End-of-Life Care: A Concept Analysis", Nursing Reports, 2024. Checked October 2026.