The DOA Scrapbook: Ask Yourself the Questions You Wish You Could Ask

I had a conversation with a colleague one day who is a really avid family history researcher about making sure we let our children know some of the things about us that we wish we knew about our parents or grandparents. 

I've been thinking it can be easy enough to sketch in a life of someone else using facts, figures and mementos because we're just providing an overview. 

We assume somehow that our children know us well and that they won't have any questions about us they wish they could ask when we're gone.  Of course they will.  They don't ask for the same reason we never asked.  Because our parents were going to live forever and we could always talk to them any old time.  If only.

For your children's sake, make a list of questions you wish you could ask a parent, grandparent, or other ancestor no longer with you.  Just basic stuff that makes them a real knowable person.  Write down your own answers to those questions, and tuck them in a nice pocket page or on a journaling page in your family scrapbook.

That is why I like scrapbooks, they present a nice visual summary of people and events.  Each page can be a discovery or a fond memory.  You can see a whole person from photographs, memories, letters, notes.  Write your own page, because who knows you better than you?