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Sharing Your History
Creating a Legacy
for Your Grandkids By Sue Marquette Poremba
The best stories to pass along revolve around family events. Grandchildren would love to learn how their grandparents met, how Grandma celebrated her birthday as a little girl or what Grandpa's childhood on the farm was like. And, of course, all grandchildren want to know what their parents were really like when they were children.
for Your Grandkids
It is also important to remember that the era in which we grew up is unique to our generation. The generation of grandparents who grew up during World War II will have different stories to share than the grandparents who grew up at the start of the Vietnam War. Often grandparents think their stories are boring and not worth sharing, but to the grandchildren, those years are unknown and interesting.
While most stories are worth sharing, there are situations, however, when grandparents should keep silent, says Andrea Gross, creator of Legacy Prose, a Denver-based company that creates commissioned memoirs for people across the United States.
"You should never share something that will cause hurt or destroy someone's life," says Gross. There is usually a reason why a secret is kept, and there is rarely any reason to reveal it later in life.
Ethical wills are growing in popularity. They can be written once and copied for each family member, as Scott's grandfather did, or they can be personalized, unique words of wisdom shared from grandparent to grandchild. The ethical wills generally pass along the grandparent's value system and provide a moral compass for the family to follow.
For grandparents who aren't sure how to get started, there are a number of books that provide prompts for specific memories.
"The book organizer can set up their own prompts or use some of the ones we have found to be popular over the years," says Francine Kent of CelebrateAHero.com. "An individual grandparent or couple or all of them can tell stories on each other as well as wecoming contributions from distant and missed family and friends. Grandparents are getting more Internet savvy every day, and we have found that they really get into the writing and collection of photos for their contributions."