My family artifact is this notebook dedicated to my great-grandmother. This notebook was handed out at her funeral and it has been kept from that day on. We hope that we can continue to keep this notebook as a remembrance of her and who she was. I had never gotten the chance to meet her and I didn’t know what she looked like. She was my mother’s grandma and even when I look at the picture of her, I can see the similarities between her, my grandma, and my mom. Her name was Esther Bolanji Balofin and I was surprised when I found out because I had forgotten that my grandmother had a maiden name too. I have never heard of the last name Balofin and this makes me think of my grandmother differently. It makes me remember that she was young once too and lived just like me with all sorts of ambitions and goals. This makes me wonder how she thinks back on life and whether she enjoyed life or not. The more I think about my grandmother’s life, I think about how she took her mother's death. Her death must’ve taken a heavy toll on the people around her and it even makes me sad to know that my chance to meet her was taken away by the cycle of life. Her date of death was the 29th of April, 2011. I was a little more than two years old when she died and it makes me wonder if my life would’ve been any different if we had gotten the chance to meet.

– AO

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more