Pixorium Success Story: Stopping the Evaporation of Memory and the Unexpected Dividend

By Pixorium Client, Paul Bianchi

I had wanted to write a partial history of my family for some time, but it was one of those resolutions on New Year’s Day that never make it to February.

My motivation to write was personal: I wanted our three daughters and their children to know something about the people they never knew—great grandparents and great great grandparents—and I figured that if I did not take the time to write it down, then it was unlikely that anyone else in my family would. The past, their past, will all be forgotten and in an important way, these ancestors would be forgotten. I wish someone before me had done the same for me, because as I got into the project, I realized how much was already lost. I did not want it all to evaporate.

And, as I got into the project, it grew. I talked to some distant relatives who knew stories that I did not, sometimes confirming what had been passed down, sometimes setting me straight. I also included Barbara’s family who, unlike mine which all arrived here in the wave of immigration from Italy at the very end of the 19th century, came with some of the first settlers to Massachusetts.

It’s not that either of our families was extraordinary or did extraordinary things to leave their mark in history: immigrant rags-to-some-riches story in my case; 350 years of comfortable existence in Barbara’s family. But stories like ours have populated the country. I tried to present my parents and grandparents as real people, strengths and flaws, not black and white soulless characters from a faded photograph album. When they were funny, or quirky, I included that liveliness.

I obsess more than most, so the project took longer and became more ambitious, but that’s me, not inherent in doing this. I am glad that the project expanded because I wanted what I wrote to last because I want these family stories to last. The final book will last. Since then I have shared it with friends as well as family. Almost all say they want to do something like this. Then I become the cheerleader.

Did my grandchildren all gather around at the next holiday get-together to share these stories, read them aloud, and comment on them? No, that didn’t happen; it doesn’t work that way, but all who could read or understand it being read to them did appreciate the book, and everyone got his or her own copy. Importantly, it will be there for them when they too ask family questions in years to come.

In doing my part to stop the evaporation of memory, I also feel I have honored my parents and grandparents, and Barbara’s too, by letting their lives pass to present and future generations. I didn’t know I would feel that. It was an unexpected dividend.

Editor’s Note: Giving in to my prodding, Paul Bianchi describes finally creating his book, Family Stories, and the unexpected dividend. The finished book is a treasure; I am so pleased to have had a hand in its creation.