Forty-nine years ago this week my mother died.  She was only 55 years old and I was 16.  A few days ago Husband was asking me questions about the events around her death when the tears started flowing.  (you can read more here.)  I’m always shocked at the raw emotion I still have about her death so long ago. My children never met their maternal grandmother.  Even Husband never knew the woman who shaped my life thereby influencing the lives of my family. What do they know about her?  Precious little because I rarely talk about her.  I’ve allowed the pain of separation to obliterate the joy of knowing her.  But this week it dawned on me that by rarely mentioning my mother, I’m cheating my family out of a rich legacy left them by a gentle woman of simple faith.  They should know as much as I can remember of her.  She deserves to be remembered and they deserve to know what a good heritage they have.

How about you?  Have you passed down the stories your children and grandchildren need to hear?  Does your family know the wins and the losses of their forebears?  You may not be proud of some of your family members, but that’s no excuse for omitting them from the history your family needs to know.  I’m not proud of the choices my father made, but I still need to pass on his sad lessons in hope that the next generations will make better choices.  And there are always some good facets of even the worst characters to mention and admire.  Honestly passing on the real-life good and bad of those who went before helps the next generation realize that everyone is flawed, yet we have the responsibility of choosing daily to do the right thing.  I’ve shared with our children the mistakes my father made that negatively impacted his life and that of his family.  I hope they are extra aware that they need to avoid those mistakes in their own lives when temptation knocks.  What mistakes or bad choices can you point out in your family or your own life to your kids and grandkids so they can be alert and not fall into the same snare?

What accomplishments, what good character traits, what beliefs, what skills did your family members have?  Have you been passing down stories about them?  Every one of us wants to believe we come from good stock, so tell the next generations about things they can be proud of in their forebears.  What a compelling way to teach virtues like honesty, hard work, faith, bravery, dedication, and love by telling about their own family members who demonstrated these virtues in their lives.  Husband’s family- being of Irish descent and loving to tell stories, have passed down many real life stories of exploits on the frontier.  The tackle-anything attitude of his grandparents has definitely trickled down to him.  Storytelling is powerful!  I know very little of my mother’s family, but the few tidbits I’ve gleaned about my maternal grandfather I hold onto.  Still working in his eighties, he died suddenly when I was a toddler and I have no memory of him.  I’m grateful for a couple of photos I have of him.  Others have told me what a dedicated teacher of the men’s  Sunday School class he was.  The impressive three-story brick farmhouse with wrap around porch he built or had built still stands in good condition one hundred years later.  I’m proud of the spiritual and entrepreneurial legacy he left me.  I need to enrich my grandchildren’s lives by passing on to them what I know of their great-great grandfather.

So how do I plan to pass on the experiences of past generations to my children and grandchildren?  I’m learning that everyone of every age enjoys a story.  As we live our day to day lives, opportunities arise to share a short two or three-minute story of a relative’s life experience as it relates to the topic at hand.  A teenage granddaughter is talking about how much she loves to read.  I mention that both her great grandfather and her great great grandfather were authors.  Authors not of fiction books like she enjoys reading, but of nonfiction volumes.  And I shared the topics they wrote about and what I knew of their skills.  She was intrigued and a little bit of the good her family accomplished entered her thinking.  Perhaps as she’s struggling to write that term paper, she’ll think of her forebears and realize she comes from a long line of people gifted with writing skills.  What skills did your parents and grandparents have that you could you tell the next generation about?  It may fan into flame those skills in them!

Here’s a storytelling tip from Craig Valentine, a top notch public speaker:  tell two stories back to back.  One story illustrating a positive idea and the other illustrating the negative form of that idea.  The contrast will emphasize how good the positive idea is and how bad the negative idea is.  For instance, Husband has pointed out how one of his grandfathers could never read or write.  He was raised poor and uneducated. He had menial jobs his whole life, never drove a car, never had a nice home and was stuck in old ways of thinking that weren’t based on facts.  His other grandfather was also raised poor and was only able to attend school sporadically until the third grade, after which he never got to go to school at all.  Yet he became an avid reader, educating himself even to his old age.  He built himself and his family a pretty and comfortable home.  He had challenging jobs, one of which was making launch apparatus for wartime ships at the port of Portland.  His original engineering idea for making a more efficient launch mechanism won him recognition in the form of a public award and monetary reward.  At the age of 70, he became a Christian, started attending church, and read his new Bible daily until the day he died at 93.

Many families have written down or made audio recordings of family stories as told by the older generation.  The problem with audio recordings is that technology changes so rapidly that within a decade the recordings may not be able to be played.  Another way to pass on stories is through photos.  Do keep in mind that printing photos is always a good idea due to changing technology that may make current digital images difficult to access in the future.  My goal this year is to make photo books for each of our adult children of scanned photos of their parents (Husband and me) during our growing up years and our families including grandparents and great grandparents.   Of course, of great importance is compiling photos of each of our children’s childhoods to pass on to their children.  Feeling overwhelmed already!  Need to break it down into smaller chunks.  How will you pass on the past experiences of your family to the next generation?  However you choose to document your family’s memories, your effort ensures that the stories will live for another generation.