# 20 questions to ask someone who is dying about what they want remembered

These are the questions people most regret not asking. They are also the ones the person most wants to be asked, if it is done with care. Ask "what do you want people to know?" first and "what would you rather leave out?" second. Everything else follows from those two.

1. Is there something you've never told anyone that you would like someone to know? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   Ask only once, late, and with the door open: "or would you rather leave that?"
2. What would you like your grandchildren to know about you that they can't see from here?
3. What is a thing you would hate to see written in a book about you?
   Ask it straight. It sets the rules for everything else and makes people braver, not shyer.
4. Who should get the things that matter to you, and why that person? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
5. How would you like to be remembered, in one sentence?
6. What do you want to say to the people who will read this?
7. What song do you want played at the end, and what should people do while it plays? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
8. Is there a letter, a photograph or a paper you kept hidden? Where is it now? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   A hidden object is a story with a location.
9. Who knows the real story, if anyone? Would you want them asked? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
10. Is there a thing you would like told after you are gone, but not before? Who should hear it first? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
11. What did you most want to give your children that you never had?
12. Is there an object in your house that you would run back in for? What's its story?
13. What do you know now that you wish someone had told you at twenty-five?
14. What are you proudest of, that nobody would guess?
15. If your life were a film, where would it start?
   Their answer tells you where the book starts too.
16. What do you think happens after? Has that answer changed? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
17. Was there a recipe written down anywhere, or was it all in someone's head? Whose head?
   A recipe is an object with a story and an owner. Ask where it is now.
18. What did you build, fix or plant at a house that is still there, as far as you know?
19. Is there a friend you have never thanked properly? What for?
20. What did you make, fix, sell or look after that is still out there somewhere?
   Work that outlasts the worker is the chapter the family never thought to ask for.

## How to use these questions

Ask by voice, not by form. Record it. One or two questions a visit is enough; the follow-up ("who else was there?", "what did she say?", "what happened the day after?") matters more than the next question on the list. Tender questions are marked; ask them once, late, and with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question itself.

## About Tellforth

Tellforth asks questions like these by voice, remembers every answer, asks the next question a good listener would, and writes a finished book from what was said: a memoir in the person's own words, or a novel built on the true story. You own every recording. https://tellforth.com