The phone rang, and it was my mother. Nothing unusual about that. She calls me nearly every day to check in. I knew she had gone to a doctor’s appointment but could not have prepared for what she told me. She had stage 4 of a rare type of cancer. She was sure it was a death sentence and that she had very little time left on Earth.

After the initial shock wore off, I started thinking about all the things I still wanted to know about her. I wanted to help her sort out her medical paperwork, her financial, her personal effects, know what her wishes are going forward. It was a very overwhelming feeling. I wanted to be there for her in any way she needed me to be.

I wanted to know the things that were “our family.” Having lost my dad in 2005, she is the last person that has the stories of her life, her romance with my dad and of me growing up. Her memory is not great, but the old memories are still easily accessed.

I started making a list of things I wanted to find out.
Names of people in photos
Stories for photos
Family recipes
Stories attached to items she had.

I knew that this was not the time for carefully organizing things. This was the time for the basics. I gathered a stack of 3×3 sticky notes and a pencil (click here to buy photo-safe pencils). I grabbed a photo album out of her closet and sat next to her. I gave her the photo album, and I just started writing. She would tell me who was who and I stuck the sticky note on the photo. While this was not the end state of these albums, I could now rest assured that they would not end up at an auction with no one knowing the people or places of these family photos.

Don’t wait until “that call arrives” start now. You can grab a stack of sticky notes and go through one album with your parents/grandparents or other loved one at a time. Good news is that the oncologists have come up with some treatment that has a good hope of helping my mom. I have gotten a good start at making sure that her memories are noted for future generations. I will keep doing more because it just seems like once we realize our time is limited, we are moved to doing things we assume there will always be time for.

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