Dear Prudence,
My grandmother is in her 90s and frail, but her mind is as sharp as ever. She came from one of the wealthiest families in China, and her family was decimated by the Communist revolution. Luckily, my grandmother escaped the brutality because she had just joined my grandfather in Taiwan. There she built a new life amid poverty. Her younger sisters, who were in China, bore the brunt of the revolution. Members of their family were executed, or worked to death, and they themselves barely survived the hard labor and famines. No one has asked any of these sisters for full details about their younger years for fear of dredging up negative emotions. But I feel my generation and the future generation should know what they survived, and who they were. Should I just let the past stay in the past and not trouble a frail, elderly woman, or is there a way I can broach this subject with my grandmother?