Every time I talk with my mother on the phone, the conversation turns to who has died in the community since the last conversation. That grim, and some would say morose topic, has always been part of the farming life that I grew up with.

Mom now lives “in town”, which consists of only about 600 people. She is one of those people who has literally lived an entire life within 30mi from where she was born. Today she lives about 2 blocks from the town library, which was once the small private hospital where she was born. Whether in a small New England or Colorado town, events like births, deaths, and who bought a new (and loaded) car punctuate the timeline in local memory. As the farming town where my mother lives grows ever smaller, deaths take on more prominence as not just hallmarks in a community but as the pulse of an ill and weakening patient.

As I grew up on a farm, death was part of the regular conversation. At “family time” during “supper” (the urban equivalent of “dinner”) the talk would be about news or gossip (on the verge of becoming news). On many occasions, an injury or death was mentioned and the poor victim’s age was always part of it. There were the stories that “So and So” was old, had fallen and was discovered after a day or two, and rushed to the hospital. But usually, the news was about how a father or son or daughter had suffered a farming accident and were horribly killed, often mangled as part of the experience. Knowing the victim’s age was not an indicator of achievement, like how old a senior citizen had reached, but an emphasis to how tragic the event should be gauged.

Tragic deaths sometimes literally became landmarks on the broad and open Colorado plains, marking locations as surely as a twist in a road or a non-descript hill. Some of the events had happened long ago but had now become part of the landscape and a collective memory of the past. An old windmill near my farm was reported to be the place in the pioneer days of the late 1800s where an abusive husband tied his wife to be killed by a crazed bull; He was the final victim when he could not outrun the bull himself. Then there was the story of an old and weathered house, still standing today, solitary along a long and open road where nobody had lived since the early 1900s; Two small brothers once died there in their beds, having gone to sleep with baby rattle snakes in their pockets. Parents told these stories to kids with a little sadistic glee, maybe sometimes as a morality story for being careful or to scare them at Halloween. But the stories also were a grim comfort that offered continuity in a life where injuries were common. If these terrible things have always happened, then they were not as shocking when a recent episode struck.

The stories of tragic farm death were not just from distant times, but my own youth as well. A rise in a hill along a now forgotten country road once marked where a boy driving a farm tractor home had died when it flipped backwards, crushing him; I was only 11 years old and just a little younger than the boy when I heard about the accident over family dinner. I will never forget the time I was a teenager driving along a sharp curve during the summer at wheat harvest when I witnessed a large flat stretch of pasture littered with sacks of bread, paper plates shaking in the light breeze, soda cans strewn everywhere, and an overturned pickup; a young girl with a for-hire harvest crew from outside of the area was returning with supplies and took the curve too fast, Dead On Arrival. These events shocked me and caused me to often wonder if I would be next some day, dying painfully and alone. They also galvanized me to “not screw up” when doing things since the deaths in many cases were at the hands of the unfortunate victims.

The near misses also counted as part of the community news and lore. Like the time when “Old Man Ostrowsky” fell into the hay bailer and was found several hours later, thought to surely be dead or worse, and was alive and OK save for the broken ribs and deep impression in his chest of a Skoal can from his shirt pocket. Or when my brother and I were in a rollover accident on the way to the farm; Word quickly spread that “The Silsbee Boys” were dead. The last time I visited my mother, a farmer mentioned the accident 30 years after it had happened.

By law, family farms are not regulated by OSHA laws. If regulated, the cost of safety measures, insurance, etc. would bankrupt the already struggling farms. As a result, more accidents happen on family farms than in other small businesses or industries and often result in maiming injuries or death. While farmers try to be as safe as possible, people realize that life can take tragic turns and that accidents and death are part of it. Sometimes rural people are accused of having a fatalistic view of life with a belief, almost wish, for bad things. Their view is often fatalistic, not because of a grim outlook at life but more of a recognition that death always is part of life, especially where earning a living means hard labor, children often working as adults, and turning 50 years old is marked by premature aging and a host of physical ailments. They believe that life is earned and sometimes premature death is a bitter penalty.

I learned long ago that part of the conversation with my mother in her small and shrinking town would be who has died since our last talk. After several years of living an urban life, I thought that the topic always coming up was strange and that so many people dying, seemingly all the time, was maybe due to bad water or even a secret toxic dumping site by the government. Instead, deaths in a town of only 600 people, maybe 1000 people in the surrounding community, is more pronounced because of its impact. As part of Mom telling who has died, she identifies the person’s immediate ancestry. Although “Bob” is 36 and has a family, she relays it as, “Bob, Joyce X’s oldest boy, died over near the Simm’s place when. . .”. Her slightly different obituary isn’t the usual testimony to what the person was or became, but how their life and death had relevance in the community. The death affected them all and the telling emphasized it.

As I go about my own life, I understand that many people are uncomfortable talking about death and very uneasy when I relay stories of how people from my youth met their ends. I think I am lucky that I don’t view talking about death as something that everybody should shun, not discuss, only reference as a hushed end to a life, seeing it as outside of life as something foreign. Death is sad, tragic, and often heartbreaking when youth is cut short. How I was exposed to death being a part of everyday events has helped me to see life and death as a balance. Recognizing death as equally as life helps to actually appreciate life more. I think life is something we earn, achieve, and at times even fight for. And as a result we should savor it more, especially when peppered with the darker spice that is death.

– Mason