In community with the living—and the dead
On how remembering can feel like a homecoming.
Trigger Warning: Mentions of Death and Holocaust
Have you ever flipped through an old family album and paused at a face you’ve only heard stories about—but never met? Maybe you wondered: Who were they? What made them laugh? How did they spend their leisure time?
For 20-year-old Elena Cuomo, this simple act of leafing through old photographs opened the door to a deeper realization.
Elena comes from a Jewish family. Her great-grandfather emigrated from Żyrardów, Poland to Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1936—but he couldn’t bring the entire family as there wasn’t enough money. The last letter from those who stayed behind arrived in July 1939, just three months before the Nazi invasion. On September 13 of that year, the Nazis entered Żyrardów.
No one knows for certain how Elena’s relatives died. But she grew up carrying the weight of that loss. For years, she was consumed by Holocaust research—stories of loss and genocide left little room for joy. And then, something shifted. She began looking at the photos again—not for tragedy, but for traces of life. In them, she saw joy. Her family laughing together. Traveling. Celebrating. Living.
“I realized,” she shares, “my family had a life before their assassination. They enjoyed so many things, and I’m pretty sure they’d rather be remembered as happy people than as people who suffered. We have to remember the things we enjoyed—not only the pain.”
Elena is now rebuilding that memory by learning Yiddish and reviving the music and literature they loved. Piecing together not only how they died—but how they lived. It’s a tender kind of remembrance—one that doesn’t dwell only in grief but reaches toward joy. Toward presence. Toward continuity.
What if we are in community with the dead as much as we are with the living? Through stories. Through rituals. Through recipes. Through the way we laugh, cry, cope, and carry forward.
This week, we invite you to open an old photo album. Call someone who remembers what you don’t. Or simply sit with the quiet thought that perhaps… those who came before are still walking with you.
To lives lived and remembered,
Team FUEL.