Look through old photos with your parents and ask who everyone is. Somebody needs to remember the names.

Photographs survive and the knowledge attached to them does not. A box of pictures stays legible for a century while the names and places behind it live in two or three heads and then stop existing. Nobody plans the moment the names are lost.

Sit down with whoever is oldest and go through a stack, asking for a name on every face. Record the conversation on your phone, which takes no effort and keeps the voice as well. One afternoon of this is the difference between a family and a pile of strangers.