Years ago I saw an interview with Shelby Foote, the noted Civil War historian. In that interview he stated that he had chronicled the lives of so many people that he had reached an unusual conclusion. He believes that everyone's life can be divided into roughly three equal time periods. In each of those periods there was one event that shaped the remainder of that person's life. But he also stated that you could not define those events until the person died, because only then did you know the length of each periods.

Every genealogists sooner or later laments something like "I sure wish I had asked my grandfather about his father before he died!" It is just this knowledge everyone needs to think about while communicating with family members of all ages.

Recently we learned some new information about my mother by talking to her about her childhood, in particular why she was born in Quincey, Florida rather than Pavo, Georgia. But the real issue may be what does my mother, at 89, remember about her grandfathers, if anything. What she remembers about her grandfathers could easily give us some memory spanning at least one hundred and fifty years.

I remember my mother's parents, but never knew her grandparents. She remembers them, so can I get her to recall what she remembers and get it down on paper? My mother also knew my paternal grandmother, and she has already told us things about her that we did not know. If she can remember anything about them, then we can possibly span some fraction of knowledge of the family never before recorded.

Whether you choose to share with us or not, gathering the memories related to family members is important genealogical work. One might argue that you are gathering unverified information seen through a filter of time. But you might also argue that one's impressions of a person are as real and many times more relevant than items like census data or other official records because they include knowledge about interactions and personalities. Repeatedly we learn more about why people were the way they were, or why they made the decisions they made. This information usually resides only in the minds of people how witnessed events that shaped their ancestors.

To the degree that you document your family members for your descendents you are preserving your ancestors in the minds of others. And in doing so we all know they (and we) can live on in the minds of future generation.

The conversation with my mother led us to ask the question "What do our oldest living relatives know about themselves and about the oldest relatives they can remember?" Just as importantly, "Do we have it down on paper?"

Family stories can take the form of question and answer interviews, narratives, written stories, and a host of forms that will make sense to the teller or the writer. The important thing is to document our history while we can.

Here is another twist, and certainly food for thought. Years from now someone is going to tell your story in a forum similar to this one.

• What do you want people to remember about you?
• What do you want people to know about you?
• What events shaped your life?

You do not need to make these things public, and certainly we would not encourage you to do so. But we would encourage you to write down for your heirs what you want them to know so that there is less speculation and more information.