An older person deserves questions about today, not only invitations to remember yesterday.

Nostalgia is a comfortable register for visitors, and it can quietly become the only one on offer. When every question points backward, the message is that a person’s interesting life is finished and only the archive remains in circulation. People notice that, even when they answer warmly and tell the story anyway.

Ask what they are reading, watching, arguing with, or looking forward to this month. Ask what they make of something happening now. Keep the old stories too, since some of them are wonderful, but let them sit beside a real conversation about the present.