Mini #5 -Francesca Galarus

Upon my high school graduation, my mom took me to Italy on a roots tour. We had no idea what to expect, but my aunt had done a little more research than us and she came prepared with photos of my great-grandmother and all fifteen of her brothers and sisters. Of the sixteen of them, she was the only one to come to the United States. Therefore, most of the ancestors of my great aunts and uncles still reside in the same town.

When we finally were able to meet up with everyone, we struggled between English and Italian, but we spent the majority of the time looking at family photos. Our shared history instantly bonded us. We feverishly wrote down names and dates on the backs of the photos so that we would never forget and we talked about what those people were like and what had happened to them. We even recreated photos that our ancestors had taken, posing in the same way with the same back drop.

We also were able to see our family seal, family crypt and the famous balcony that my great-grandmother was standing on the first time she saw her future husband.

I believe that my experience in Italy really shows how important it can be to leave legacies. For the most part, leaving legacies gets a bad rep, with reasons of selfishness and wanting and needing to be known post-mortem for ‘something.’ However in my case, the legacies that were left by my ancestors allowed my family to reconnect and build new relationships based almost completely on our well-documented shared history.