Molden

“The meaning of life – its joy, boundless beauty and love – emerges out of our most devastating losses.” - Nick Cave

In late August, I was in a treehouse across the Lustrafjord, staring at the top of Molden, which is located directly above my family’s original farm in Norway. In my backpack were the combined ashes of my brother and father.

Tone had arranged this birthday weekend without realizing what was across the fjord. Once she understood, she offered to walk alongside me on the journey to spread their ashes.

• 

• 

—

My brother, Luke, was killed in a car crash in 2011, the day after my birthday. The evening before, I had been at the Orton Park Festival in my old neighborhood in Madison, Wisconsin, thinking life couldn’t get any better than this. My roommate had baked a cake and biked it over to the park. We played Settlers of Catan on a picnic table while enjoying live music and celebrating community.

After the call, I was directed into the passenger seat of a friend’s car, and she drove me to my childhood home, where my brother had been living. I remember looking around on the drive, in my shocked state, wondering how it was possible that daily life was continuing.

Hadn’t they heard the news?

At the house, I saw my father coming up the driveway and ran to hug him.

This hadn’t always been a driveway. That came later. When I was a child, it was still part of the lawn, where my brother and I would build forts in the winter and catch fireflies in jars in the summer. Nearby was the apple tree that we climbed, where we had wrapped a branch with yarn, checking it every spring to see how much it had weathered or if it had fallen off yet. On the other side were the lilac bushes and tire swing. The clothesline.

Across the street, the cemetery where we used to play.

The cemetery where my father's headstone is now located.

The look in his eyes was vacant. Yet I would get lost down my own path of grief, separate from his.

By the fall of 2015, my father’s dementia had progressed to the point where he was hospitalized and deemed unable to care for himself. I also learned that an acquaintance of the family who had stepped in to help him had been taking his money. By the time I understood what was happening, much of it was gone.

I made frequent trips between Madison and La Crosse, trying to help. I carried a lot of guilt for not having understood what was happening sooner. I was like a pingpong ball down Highway 14. I was falling apart, and felt scared and alone. I knew I had to do something drastic, before I lost it completely.

I wanted to be alone, in the woods, for a month.

I had been to Sweden in 2014 and felt empowered to cross the Atlantic again, and my mind drifted to Norway. I grew up eating lefse, and lutefisk was on the table at holidays, but I hadn’t really felt a strong connection to Norway otherwise. If there had been any contact with Norwegian family members, I wasn’t aware.

I learned quickly that a monthlong stay in Norway was going to be expensive, so I searched for ways to make it work. I came across WWOOF and reached out to about ten farms. A response from someone named Tone mentioned that her family had just adopted a puppy and would need someone to watch her during their summer vacation.

We arranged for me to come to their farm in Hallingdal in June, a few days before the family left. I would stay with Emma, their puppy, and help with a yoga camp and other tasks around the farm in exchange for food and housing.

Before leaving the U.S., I had also begun looking into my family’s history. Weeks before I was set to leave, I connected with them, and we made tentative plans for a visit. We would connect again after I landed.

I arrived at the train station in Ål on June 16, 2016. Tone was there to greet me, and we drove to her farm.

A few days later, I stood in the yard with Emma, waving goodbye to the family. Over the next week, Emma and I went hiking, encountered sheep in the forest, and played with her toys in the house. Still a young dog, she tested her boundaries. I was a broken human, and she made me laugh and brought color back into my world.

My monthlong trip ended with a journey to Luster, where I met my Norwegian family for the first time and visited the original family farm in Marifjøra.

I returned in 2018, then 2019, both to Ål in Hallingdal and to Marifjøra each time. By the time Covid hit in 2020, I had purchased tickets to return again that summer and had left a pair of hiking boots there in 2019.

Tone and I traveled to Spain together in 2023, and I continued to visit the farm, which started to feel like home. Each time I walked through the door, I would drop my bag to greet a tail-wagging, enthusiastic Emma, my first friend in Norway.

—

Now, ten years after that first visit, Tone and I were spending my birthday weekend at Kroken Gard, across the fjord from my family’s original farm.

We read, cooked food, watched the sheep on the lawn, built fires, enjoyed the sauna and caught up.

On Sunday, we hiked down past Urnes Stave Church to the car, took the ferry across the fjord and drove to the base of Molden.

On our hike up, Tone picked some St. John’s Wort and asked if I knew about its qualities. I shared that my father’s name was John and took it into my hands. We stopped for a snack and looked out over the Lustrafjord. We could see Kroken back across the fjord, perched high on the mountain.

At the top, Tone stayed near a cairn and I wandered off in the direction of the original farm, where I had pinpointed the place where I wanted to spread the ashes. The fjord was intermittently visible through the shifting clouds.

I didn’t feel overwhelmed. I felt proud to have brought them here, together, after thinking about it for so long.

I thought of the song I chose for my father’s service when he died of Alzheimer’s dementia in October 2018, a day after what would have been my brother’s birthday.

Go Rest High on That Mountain by Vince Gill.

I haven’t been able to listen to it since his service, but it floated into my mind then. I laid the St. John’s Wort on a stone near where I spread the ashes and walked back to meet Tone.

After the hike, we visited my Norwegian family in Gaupne. They had moved off the original farm in the spring, and their grandson had taken it over.

Ten years after I first traveled from Tone’s farm to meet them, here we all are, sitting around the table together.

That evening I rode back to Ål with Tone. I would spend the night, then take the train to Bergen the next day.

This time, there was no sound on the other side of the door, and no Emma.

She had died in May.