By Joan McConnell and Keenager News
Today it seems that everyone has a story to tell. Unfortunately, many older folks don’t live long enough to tell it. What a shame. All that history in one persons memory and never having a chance to share it. So we never get to hear the lessons that we sorely need to hear. Fortunately, there are people, perhaps you, who have embraced the idea of journaling, writing short entries into a notebook so that you can recall that interesting story your grandma told you, or a thought you had that you’d want to blog about. I envy your will-power. It’s tough to do and tougher to keep doing it.
I lost my grand-parents long ago. In fact only got to briefly know my one grandfather. How I would love to have asked them all about Ireland, their birthplace. Why they came to America, were they discriminated against, how different life here was compared to life in Ireland. How did they raise their kids here compared to raising kids there. So much history never told. Author Joan McConnell. herself Irish, realized that family history was not being passed down to next generations simply because questions were never asked. So she developed an outline that could be used to gather such family information and could be used to tell their story to all future family generations.
And here is the outline. Nothing fancy, no blood need be taken and analyzed, just some simple questions to be answered by the people you want remembered. Add your own questions if you want. Just remember to do it before it’s to late and have fun !
