Grief and Oral History: Recording Voices to Remember

Grief work has a strange habit of turning ordinary moments into meditations on mortality. Ask anyone who has spent years supporting the bereaved, and they'll admit to hesitating before deleting an old voicemail, wondering: what if this is the last recording of that voice?

That worry isn't really morbid — it's earned. Anyone who has worked in end-of-life care or grief support for any length of time learns that people can be gone in an instant, and that the sound of a voice fades from memory faster than we expect.

Then there are the stories that vanish with them. A grief therapist who reflected on this once described her paternal grandmother, who spent hours recounting childhood memories, family history, and the meaning behind the objects and artwork scattered through her home. After the therapist's father died, the grandmother shared stories of his own childhood and the wilder chapters of his teenage and college years.

She also remembered stories from her maternal grandmother, a Greek immigrant who ran a restaurant in West Virginia. Stories about food and family would spill out while she cooked. Years later, those memories have grown blurrier with each passing year.

At a workshop in Baltimore hosted by the team behind The Rise of Charm City — women who generously share their skills to help people gather oral histories, big or small, from public figures to relatives — this grief flooded back. Sitting in that room, she realized how simple it would have been to record her grandmothers telling their stories. A tape recorder and a few hours together could have preserved their voices permanently. She thought, too, of the stories people told about her father and about her sister's boyfriend John after they died — stories shared at the funeral and in the months that followed, ones she assumed she'd remember forever but that have quietly faded. It felt like a loss that could have been prevented.

As someone who works in grief and writes about it, she's long admired StoryCorps, one of the largest and most well-known oral history projects around. If you haven't come across it, it's worth a look. Projects like StoryCorps and The Rise of Charm City make clear how much value there is in recording these voices — and how little most of us actually do it.

A nudge worth taking

After some frustration at never having started this work within her own family, it became clear that plenty of others are in the same position. The tools to record a voice are everywhere, and the process itself is simple. Sometimes all it takes is a nudge — a workshop, an article, anything — to get someone moving on preserving family stories. Maybe what pushes you to start will be memories of someone who died. Maybe it will be capturing the memories of someone still living. Either way, here are some practical ways to begin.

These tips come from an oral history workshop hosted by The Rise of Charm City, along with resources gathered from StoryCorps, which has an enormous library of tools and guidance for anyone taking on a project like this.

Starting an oral history project

Questions to sort out before you begin

• Who do you want to record?
• Will you interview people one at a time, or together?
• Where will the recording happen?
• How and when will you ask someone if they're willing to be recorded?
• What questions do you plan to ask?
• What will you do with the recordings once you're finished?

Equipment: keep it simple

Don't let gear become an excuse to put this off. Most smartphones already have a voice memo or recording app built in, and Verizon publishes tips for recording audio on a phone. If you'd like better sound quality, a Zoom recorder is a reasonably priced upgrade. A Tascam recorder was also recommended at the workshop and appears to have strong reviews.

Tips for the recording session

• Ask the person you're interviewing where they'd like to record. You need quiet, but they may feel more comfortable in their own home or office rather than yours.
• Choose a quiet space and check for background noise. Sit in the room in silence for a moment first — a ticking clock or humming appliance may not register consciously, but it will show up on the recording.
• Test your equipment before you officially begin. There's nothing worse than asking great questions and getting great answers, only to discover the recorder wasn't working.
• Start by stating who you are, and have the other person do the same, including their relationship to you or to the person you're remembering. It feels obvious in the moment, but years later, whoever listens will need that context spelled out.
• Read each question aloud into the microphone so both the question and the answer are captured clearly.
• Try not to verbally react while someone is talking. Saying "yes" or "that's interesting" to show you're listening is natural, but it can muddy the recording. Nod instead, and save your words for after they finish.
• Jot down anything you want to revisit. An answer may spark a follow-up question you hadn't planned. Don't interrupt — just make a quick note and circle back later. Keep a pencil and paper nearby if you don't trust yourself to remember.
• End by asking if there's anything else they'd like to share that you didn't think to ask about.

Once the recording is finished

Whether you've recorded one conversation or twenty, think ahead about what you want to do with the material. If you have several recordings, it can help to edit them together into one larger piece — for instance, weaving together different people's answers to the same question about someone you've lost. Audacity is a free, open-source program that lets you edit recordings yourself, or you can hire someone to do it for you.

Decide, too, how you'll share and store what you've recorded. If the files live on a phone, laptop, or computer, back them up somewhere else as well. Going to the trouble of capturing these memories only to lose them in a hard-drive crash would be its own small tragedy.

Interviewing family members living with memory loss

StoryCorps has built a full toolkit specifically for interviewing people with memory loss. If that describes someone you hope to interview, it's worth reviewing before you sit down together. StoryCorps also has recorded examples of oral histories done with people experiencing memory loss.

A project for people facing serious illness

StoryCorps also runs a program in partnership with hospitals and hospices, helping people with terminal illness and their families record and share their stories. A list of organizations partnering with StoryCorps on this Legacy initiative is available through their site.

Oral history questions for grief

StoryCorps has put together question lists for many kinds of interviews, including one built specifically for people remembering someone they've lost. Their full set of suggested questions is worth exploring, and their questions for remembering a loved one are reproduced below.

REMEMBERING A LOVED ONE QUESTIONS:

• What was your relationship to _____?
• Tell me about _____.
• What is your first memory of _____?
• What is your best memory of _____?
• What is your most vivid memory of _____?
• What did _____ mean to you?
• Are you comfortable talking about _____'s death? How did _____ die?
• What has been the hardest thing about losing _____?
• What would you ask _____ if _____ were here today?
• What do you miss most about _____?
• How do you think _____ would want to be remembered?
• Can you talk about the biggest obstacles _____ overcame in life?
• Was there anything you and _____ disagreed about, fought over, or experienced conflict around?
• What about _____ makes you smile?
• What was your relationship like?
• What did _____ look like?
• Did you have any favorite jokes _____ used to tell?
• Do you have any stories you want to share about _____?
• What were _____'s hopes and dreams for the future?
• Is there something about _____ that you think no one else knows?
• How are you different now than you were before you lost _____?
• What is the image of _____ that persists?
• Do you have any traditions to honor _____?
• What has helped you the most in your grief?
• What are the hardest times?

If any of this speaks to you, consider it your nudge to begin. The stories worth keeping rarely wait for a convenient moment.