WE ARE THE CHOSEN

 

     We are among the chosen.  In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors--to put flesh on their bones and make them live again, to tell the family’s stories and to feel that somehow the ancestors know and approve.

 

     Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts, but rather breathing life into all who went before.  We are the storytellers of the tribe.  All tribes have one.  We have been called, as it were, by our genes.  Those who have gone before cry out to us, "Tell our story”.  So, we do.

 

     In finding them, we somehow find ourselves.  Many times, I’ve walked to a grave and told the ancestors "You have a wonderful family!  You would be proud of us!"   The task goes beyond merely documenting facts.  It goes to who we are and to why we do the things we do.  It goes to seeing a cemetery and knowing that here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh.  It goes to pride in what the ancestors were able to accomplish, in how they contributed to what we are today and to what the nation is today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family.  It goes to their fragile humanity, so much like ours that we are their mirror image—and they ours.  It goes to the task of remembering, so that they never die.

 

     So with love and care, with scribing each fact of their existence, we begin to learn that we are they and that they are the sum of who we are.  As a scribe called, I tell the story of my family.  It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and to take my place in the long line of our family’s storytellers.

 

     That is why I do our family genealogy.  That is what calls young and old to step up and restore the memory, to greet those whom we had never known before—and to know them.

 

                                                                                         --Anonymous, from the internet