My mother is 97, with some age related memory loss, but no dementia. I'm preparing the house and contents for sale, and I need the answer to a question about the past. I want to ask her in the way most likely to help her remember. Here's the situation. My late father hid a small but valuable family heirloom about fifty years ago. My mother has been fretting about it. I just found a 20-year-old note from my late father to her telling her that he hid it "in the place we used to hide the wine from So-and-So" (an alcoholic employee). I'm afraid that if I just ask her outright where they hid the wine she'll draw a blank. I thought about starting out by asking her, "Do you remember So-and-So" and trying to get her reminiscing. Any thoughts on the matter?
Maybe start out with "I was just thinking about old So-and-So and how hard he'd try to find our wine supply. ..."
(It took me quite a while to switch to saying "I remember" instead of "Do you remember" with my mother.)