A family story dies the first generation nobody bothers to tell it. Be the one who passes it on.

Stories do not fade slowly; they end in a single gap, when one generation hears a story and never repeats it, and after that there is nobody left who could. That is why the person who keeps a family’s history is rarely the oldest one. It is whoever decided to listen closely enough to tell it again.

Ask one relative for the story you have only heard pieces of, and record it on your phone with their permission. Five minutes of audio is enough. Then tell it badly to somebody your own age, because a story told badly still survives and one never told does not.