I hear voices. Sometimes, they talk to me in dreams, sometimes while I am awake. I often have to be quiet and still to hear them, but there are times they make themselves known above the activities and distractions of life. They are subtle but they are there.

I am not referring to the voices often associated with various forms of mental illness, although others and I wonder sometimes. My voices do not direct me to go squirrel hunting in the middle of the night, which would be fruitless since squirrels are diurnal, or to go and do things against my better judgment, which is also called into question. Some of these voices I know very well. Others, I have never met, but there is something eerily familiar about them, as if I have heard them before, and should be able to identify the persons associated with them. The voices are those of my ancestors.

In my teenage years, the voices were very, very faint, heard most often when I was forced to go to family reunions. They would speak, I could hear them, but I was in no way wanting to listen. I was too involved with cars, girls, and baseball to hear the spoken word of living beings much less the whispered desires of those passed.

In my college years, after the experiences of the Marine Corps, when I was privileged to be involved in the care of my aging and infirm grandparents, the voices became much more noticeable. I began to pay more attention, and even sought out a copy of my great-great grandfather’s journals from which I would, years later, derive my first two novels. I was hearing, but not listening.

This pattern continued through my adult life. I would hear the voices clearly at times, but I was so busy with raising a large family and all the things that go with it that I was able to ignore them. It wasn’t that they were not important, but I had other things to do, and as the old saying goes “out of sight, out of mind,” and that defines dead people ... mostly.

As I have grown older and the clutter of life has become less distracting, or at least more organized and manageable, the voices are prominent and insistent. The dead are making themselves and their desires known. I do not have experiences as did Scrooge with ghosts appearing in my bedroom, but subtle things such as a death certificate of a dear uncle appearing in family papers that I had been through a dozen times without ever seeing. I would receive a letter or email asking if I was kin to so-in-so, and offering a branch of the family tree that I had never considered.

I am older, and the voices are louder. Perhaps they recognize that my time is growing shorter, or I might be listening better, but whatever, I feel an increasing drive to get my genealogy in order. This has become important to me. The desire is growing more urgent.

In the Bible, Malachi tells us in the very last verse of the Old Testament that the heart of the fathers will be turned to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers in the latter days. Whether we are in that time, or not, I do not profess to know, but I am most certainly in my latter days and I am feeling an increased urgency to know the people who preceded me.

They are who I am, and I am who they were. The connection is undeniable. The voices want and need us to know who they are. By knowing them, we will know ourselves, and who doesn’t want that?

Perhaps you are hearing voices too. If not, you may not be listening. They are there, calling to you, wanting you to know them. Shhh ... be still ... hear, then do the work they require.

David Wilson Atwood is a local writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He may be contacted at: www.starchasers.us.