Your grandma’s stories are a free archive nobody else can access. Press record.

Family memory is held in people rather than in files, and it is not backed up anywhere. A single person can carry details of a place, a year and a way of living that exist nowhere else, and it rarely gets asked for because it feels permanently available. The questions you would ask later are askable now.

Sit down with a phone recording and ask about something specific rather than requesting a life story. What was your first job, what did the kitchen smell like, who was the difficult one. Specific questions open the general ones on their own.