Do we ever realize life while we’re living it?

Last week, I noted that my axes, hatchets, and saws have become rusty. I told myself that a little work with my grinder would bring them back to sharp-edged life, making them useful once again, but here’s the thing: it’s been a couple of years since I did any actual work in my woods, and I may be done. In my 75th year, heart failure and a bad back have changed my life. As English poet Chaucer wrote, some 700 years ago, “All good things must come to an end.” There you have it: simple, a little melancholic, worth remembering, and true. The hollow looks the way it does thanks to a quarter century of intentional, planned cutting and trimming with those tools. No chain saws. When I am gone, I hope the new owner will continue my work, but I’m not hopeful. In the grand scheme of things, it matters little.

Forty-some years ago, musician Don Henley wrote the lyrics for a terrific song called “The Boys of Summer,” and they make a great addition to Chaucer’s notion. “Those days are gone forever. I should just let ‘em go.” It’s something I keep telling myself; however, the older I become, the more I’m drawn to a past that included my wife, my mother and father, even classmates, good folks who once loved me, now gone.

I was reminded of this on a drive across Eastern Iowa to see my cardiologist. It was a frigid, windy day, about 11 a.m., and I was on a two-lane highway, approaching an old cemetery on the sunny outskirts of a small town. The first thing I noticed was an eagle passing over a nearby cornfield, then I saw a few people in long coats, hands in their pockets against the cold, walking across the hillside cemetery. Heading toward me on the road was a procession of cars on their way to the cemetery, presumably for a, hopefully, short graveside service.

For a brief, unexpected moment, I was in Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire, passing the cemetery in Thornton Wilder’s play, “Our Town,” a play in which the third and final act takes place in a cemetery where the dead are able to talk to each other, especially when they see the living approach. One of the dead, named Emily Webb, who died in childbirth, offers up an extraordinary soliloquy in which she asks, of anyone who would listen, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? — every, every minute?” It’s a brilliant, insightful question that is answered by a character known simply as the Stage Manager. He quickly answers Emily’s question with a blunt, “No,” before pausing and saying, “The saints and poets, maybe ---they do some.”

I could probably look at area newspaper or funeral home websites to determine whose body or ashes were being interred on that freezing, windblown day, but it doesn’t matter. More than 3 million people die in this country every year, and almost as many graveside services take place, so I was surprised at how taken I was by simply passing a rural cemetery in Eastern Iowa. I suspect being an elderly man doing his best to realize life has something to do with it.

On a happier note, last week also brought a rafter (love the word) of turkeys crossing a field in front of my house. The group moved quickly toward the road, and by the time I grabbed one of my cameras, most of them were out of sight, but I managed to get a shot of some of them through my front screened window, albeit a little out of focus. I knew that there were a number of them around, as the day before, walking toward my garage, I startled about a dozen hanging out in nearby trees. The sound of one turkey taking wing is surprising and loud. A dozen is heart-stopping. Thankfully, mine kept beating.

K urt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County and hosts the “Rural America” podcast. It can be found at https://www.ullrichruralamerica.com