Music remains gently on my mind

Memory is failing me. It took me two days to recall the word ‘vertigo.’ A breakfast date with a couple of lovely friends went completely forgotten.

Names of people I’ve known for years are now hiding from me, close at hand, but not showing themselves. Sometimes I forget to eat. So you start to think, “Is this how it all starts? Is my next stop a place we once laughingly, and perhaps cruelly, called the funny farm?”

One thing that I can still recall with some clarity is music. I suspect that’s true for most of us. I’ve been in attendance when musicians perform for residents in care facilities, and virtually everyone joins the chorus for songs like “Winter Wonderland” and “You Are My Sunshine,” songs ingrained since childhood. When I’m one day sitting in a chair in the common room of some anonymous home with a bunch of others, I’ll hope for Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung,” Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” or Toto’s “Africa,” but I suppose I’ll be disappointed. A little of John Hartford’s “Gentle On My Mind” would be nice, however, though there are a ton of lyrics in that song that really go rushing by, so I’ll need the sheet music, while everyone else looks down at their phones.

On my tractor yesterday, earbuds humming, I sang Hartford’s tune aloud, along with Kathy Mattea and Tim O’Brien. It’s a fine version, and only once did some gnatty creature try to shut me up with a kamikaze flight into my open mouth. Didn’t the bug know that at that moment I was onstage, in front of thousands, feeling every bit of it as I sang, “That you’re waiting from the backroads, by the rivers of my memories, ever smilin’, ever gentle on my mind?” I’m beginning to believe that the last creatures remaining, after we finally destroy the planet, will be insects. There seem to be more and more of them, and they get nastier and nastier. My tractor and I will be long gone, and ticks and cockroaches will rule the world.

The raccoon population out here declines rapidly this time of year. Riding with a friend recently, she commented on the fact that there were so many dead raccoons on and near the highways, and we theorized that fall harvest drives them from the fields, across dangerous roads. The ones that cause my heart to slow to a slight shiver are the mothers, dead babies at their side. Animals know a lot, but clearly haven’t yet figured out how to judge highway traffic.

The deservedly celebrated English primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall passed away last week at the good age of 91. Dr. Goodall studied wild chimpanzees for many decades and helped us all to understand that animals know happiness, grief, and society, and that they have the ability to express those things. This was a new concept to the scientific community however, it’s something pet owners, particularly of dogs and cats, have known for a long time, maybe thousands of years. We all know that there is something almost sacred about a cat or a dog that adores you and craves your attention.

My cat Luna is a good example of this. On those cloudless nights when I’m driving the lonely two-lane, nights when even the headlights don’t seem to be enough to slice through the darkness I feel, I know that my tortoiseshell cat will be waiting for me, remembering me as I remember her, patient, forgiving me for being apart, happy to see her old man, rubbing her cheek against his outstretched hand as he enters the house, their home.

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