My ability to communicate with the dead

Is it a gift or a curse?

I like to think I have the ability to communicate with the dead from centuries ago. In some ways, it’s a curse.

It’s not supernatural; the gift is simply the ability to close my eyes and step back through time to picture the faces and footsteps of my long-gone ancestors. Sometimes I can almost hear their voices whispering across oceans and centuries, reminding me of what they endured so that I could stand here today.

With that same imagination, I can fly 200 years back in time and across the sea to the doorstep of my great-great-grandmother Fredrickson’s ancestral home in Denmark, to the farmhouse that sheltered my family for generations.

This time, though, her home is in ashes. As the smoke of battle clears, I see through her tear-stained eyes: the family’s fields are strewn with the bodies of French, Danish and Norwegian soldiers, including her husband and a son.

Hours earlier, those men had been firing over her stone walls, even fighting hand to hand. Now enemies and allies share the one trait neither of them sought; they are dead.

The family barns, once filled with a year’s worth of hay, are smoldering. Stone fences built over generations lie broken and scattered. The few animals they kept for milk and meat have been driven off or stolen by the French.

Just days before, her life was filled with hope. Now it is filled with dread, a young widow with four small children, rich in land but poor in food for even a day.

A few years ago, I traveled to see those places. I was struck by how orderly everything seemed, neatly lined farms, red-roofed barns and white-trimmed houses on land as beautiful as a watercolor painting. I remember wondering aloud why anyone would leave a place like that.

I was reminded of the stories my own grandmother told me years ago. She said the Denmark of our ancestors was a very different place. In the early 1800s, the kings of Europe were drawn into the Napoleonic Wars, a senseless fight that offered little choice but to join or be conquered. Napoleon had risen from the chaos, after the French king and queen lost their heads to the guillotine and his armies thundered across Europe, leaving ruin behind.

At one point, Napoleon turned his gaze north toward Denmark. For centuries, Copenhagen had been the shipyard of Europe, crafting some of the world’s finest long-distance vessels. Danish ships carried explorers, merchants and goods to every corner of the globe. But where others saw artistry and craftsmanship, Napoleon saw weapons, tools to strike at his great rivals, England and Russia.

My gift feels like a curse when I imagine my great-great-grandmother living through that chaos. As Napoleon’s ambitions grew, Denmark was caught between two powerful enemies. To keep the treasured ships from falling into French hands, the British took drastic action. In 1807, they bombarded Copenhagen with incendiary cannon fire, setting the city ablaze.

With Denmark in ruins, the superpowers left only sadness behind. The cost was terrible. The shipyards, homes, farms and harbors of my ancestors were left in ruins. Thousands were left fatherless, orphaned, desperate and starving.

Knowing her story, I can see my family’s matriarch facing famine with her children at her side and hearing a young country across the Atlantic calling to her. Though less than 50 years old, the United States stood as a beacon of hope and freedom, far from emperors and despotic kings. “Come to America. Work hard. Lay down roots. Build a new life,” the voice seemed to say.

I can sense her deep heartache and fear as she traded nearly everything for passage to America, and how it later transformed into elation as she watched her children and grandchildren grow up in the freedoms I now share.

And today, as I imagine her remarkable life through the lens of almost two centuries, my own eyes are clouded with tears of peace and gratitude.

The real gift I have is the ability to see the challenges she faced, crossing harsh oceans and plains with a baby in her arms, the child who would become my great-grandfather and to feel the peace she must have known upon entering a country that accepted them, celebrated their differences, bound their wounds and allowed them to worship a God who created us all as equals.