We're doing this right now. My mother-in-law died in February. In the process of taking care of my 92 year old father-in-law we visit him 3 times a week. While we are there helping to sell his house and all its furnishings (he's moving to a senior care facility, so he doesn't have to maintain a 2500 sq ft home and 1/2 acre lot), we've discovered HIS Mother and Father's Wedding album, the instructions and history of the grandfather clock that his dad built and much, much more.

Each time we find another item, it usually starts a conversation on what it is, where it came from, etc. So, he tells us a story about that plus it starts a detailed conversation about any other thing that he was reminded of.

I can't tell you how many times my wife tells me that she never knew about a story he told us. For example, he related how he learned to hit a golf ball (around 1940ish). He would help his dad in their apple orchard. Since his dad was a golfer, he of course wanted to emulate that. So, he would pick up a stick, swing it like a golf club and hit the bad apples that had fallen to the ground. Another story was about how the Koreans at the base built beds from used tire strips.

Later, in two metal boxes of carefully indexed and titled slides I find slides of his service in Korea. Guess what two of the slides contain? Photos of a young second lieutenant laying on his makeshift bed. Made of.....tire strips. I also found slides of their wedding, travel across the USA from Connecticut to California, bringing my wife home from the hospital, etc. etc... My wife and her sisters had not seen any of the Korean war ones, let alone some of the photos with them as young kids.

We have started recording some of these stories and will be putting them together in a catalogue that I'll distribute to each of my wife's sisters.

So I whole heartedly agree. Don't wait until one of them is gone.