Where Germans Make Peace with Their Dead

My great-grandmother Luise Gönner had a keen eye for dead people. She would see them sitting by the side of the road sometimes when she worked in her garden in the morning, or waiting by the village crossroads at dusk, a look of mournful reproof in their eyes. Whether the sight alarmed or consoled her, I can’t say. Luise was born in 1871 and died six months after my mother’s birth, in 1935. I know only the stories about her that my mother heard growing up. She says that Luise was in most ways a sturdy, commonsensical soul, so I like to imagine that she took her visitations in stride: old friends and neighbors stopping by to pick up the conversation where they’d left off.