The following is adapted from One Last Question Before You Go by Kyle Thiermann.
One year ago, my mom fell in a parking garage. She’d been walking backward, helping a friend reverse out of a tight spot, when she stepped into the path of the garage lever—the kind that lifts when you pay to leave. The bar came crashing down on her head, knocking her to the ground and fracturing her hip and femur.
Each year, about 350,000 Americans break a hip. For the elderly, that injury can be the first domino toward decline. Movement hurts, so they stop moving… and the rest follows. My mom had always been active. She hiked, swam, and blended smoothies from her garden. Seeing her now, gripping walls for balance, was unsettling.
After the accident, she started organizing her life as if she were preparing for departure. A packet of passwords, a list of who to notify, music she loved, and even a letter to her family. She toured cemeteries with my stepdad, lying down on grassy plots to “see how it felt.” She joked about the view from six feet under, but I could tell mortality had taken hold of her thoughts.
For me, it was harder to find humor. Watching her hobble around left me moody and resentful. Worse, we’d already been drifting apart, our relationship tested by the growing chasm of conspiracy theories that had taken over her worldview. Conversations became minefields. What started as email debates turned into silence.
It’s astonishing how easily families fracture in the age of algorithms. One belief leads to another, and suddenly two people can look at the same blue sky and see entirely different things—one seeing clouds, the other, chemtrails.
My frustration wasn’t just about what my mom believed, but about what I was losing: her story.
She had lived an extraordinary life; through the sixties, through activism, through reinvention. Yet so much of her story remained unspoken, buried under digital noise and ideological fog. When she fell, it hit me: if she had died that day, her stories would have died with her.
We spend our lives reacting to our parents—trying to emulate them or escape them—but rarely do we stop to ask them. Asking questions is how we soften the statues we’ve made of them, adding nuance, texture, and grace.
You don’t have to agree with your parents to understand them. You just have to be curious. Interviewing them, recording their memories, or even having one long, honest conversation can turn into a family heirloom more valuable than any object they’ll leave behind.
Because one day, those stories will be gone… and you’ll wish you’d asked.
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For more on preserving your family’s stories and navigating complex relationships, you can find One Last Question Before You Go on Amazon.
An award-winning journalist, pro big wave surfer, and podcast host with more than four hundred episodes, Kyle Thiermann is curiosity in motion. His podcast guests include longevity expert Dr. Peter Attia, 3x Surfing World Champion Mick Fanning, and his own dad—where the idea for this book began.
Kyle has written for Outside, SURFER, and Discovery Channel, covering indigenous conflicts in Chile and exposing how Hawaii’s wild pigs are killing coral. A cultural provocateur at heart, Kyle has spearheaded national advertising campaigns for cult brands including MUD\WTR, Yeti, and Patagonia, crafting billboards above LAX and viral commercials seen by more than one hundred million people.
Earlier, Kyle tried stand-up comedy before realizing that 9:00 p.m. is past his bedtime. At least, that’s the story he tells himself.