e are the chosen.

My feelings are that 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 story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. To me, doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before.

In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count.

It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am and why I do the things I do.

It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying I can't let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.

It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are 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 deep pride that they fought to make and keep us a Nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are them and they are us.

So, 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 take their place in the long line of family storytellers.

Published in the Quebec Family History Society's Connections magazine. The original author was Della M. Cummings Wright and the piece was re-written by her grand daughter, Della JoAnn McGinnis Johnson.