The first time I touched a dead person, I was ten years old at my grandfather’s funeral. I stared at his profile because I was not tall enough to look down at his face. I noticed that the end of his nose turned slightly downward. My Aunt Thelma set a chair next to the casket. She helped me kneel on the seat of the chair for a better view.             I looked. It was Grampa for sure. As I turned to descend from the chair, Aunt Thelma said, “Carol, would you like to kiss Grampa goodbye.”...

In my seventeenth year, 1879, I fell in love with Anders Ostergren. He was a son of the land. In Wisconsin, I often spent Sunday...