VERY OFF-TOPIC
I got so many private and public well wishes about my vacation that I thought I'd share a particularly poignant aspect of the trip.
First, some background info. The catalyst for the trip was my mother's desire to have her sister and two sons join her in the tiny town of Raiano, Italy, (too small to be on some maps) where her father was born and previous generations lived and died. Having battled cancer with major surgery and chemotherapy at age 76 last year, she wanted to make sure we did this as a family unit now, while she has the strength, should the dreaded disease ever come back. Her main goal was to try to find evidence of prior generations at the cemetery.
Now the event.
We went to the church in the center of town, hoping to find someone who might give us a clue about finding the right cemetery. Having been told there is still only one cemetery, we were directed to the town hall. We met a woman who married into my grandfather's family name and she began doing some research for us while we went to the cemetery.
When we got to the cemetery, the chief of police was there waiting for us, having heard our conversation at the town hall. He introduced us to the custodian of the cemetery who tried to narrow down the areas we should look for tomb stones, markers, etc. Because we had been told almost all of the markers of the period we were searching were simple metal crosses with no names, we weren't surprised or particularly disappointed not to find anything conclusive.
As we were driving into town wondering what to do next, we decided to pull into the church parking lot to talk about it. As I was parking the van, a police car pulled up with the horn constantly blaring. I figured I had parked in the wrong place. Nope. It was the chief of police who had the cemetery custodian in his car.
The custodian had continued to look for evidence of our family roots in the cemetery long after we had left. Having found an entire memorial that was a burial site of earlier generations of our family, he and the chief of police wandered through town trying to find us. They took us back to the cemetery and my mother's dream was completely fulfilled.
--Mike Buckley |
