Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller I didn’t have the good fortune of knowing Anny Ahlbom very well. I met her one early spring afternoon in 1982, while working as a magazine and insurance salesman. She asked me right into her home six miles west of Rutledge. We drank coffee and ate apple cake. The 90-year-old lady led me through the house, showing off the paintings and carvings done by her late husband, John. She played the piano and sang and danced with me, a total stranger. She gave me a pair of mittens which she had knit, and a set of woolen wrist bands, then took my mittens with a promise to knit the hole in one of the thumbs. I didn’t have a chance to sell her anything, and by the time I left two hours later, I didn’t want to. When you enter Anny’s old house, the work of John Ahlbom overpowers you. Practically everything is hand done, starting with the rock exterior walls. Walls inside are painted floor to ceiling with murals of forests, horses, lakes. Figurines of men and animals, carved ou...

David Heiller   We don’t get much traffic on our road. Sometimes only a car or two a day. Last weekend it was busy though, from people going to Faith Lutheran Cemetery. They drove slowly, taking their time, the way you do on a nice spring day, At the cemetery they prepared the graves of their loved ones for Memorial Day by planting flowers, or pulling a few stems of grass that the lawnmower missed, the way you brush the hair out of a child’s eyes so he looks good for company. People at the cemetery wanted their sons and husbands and mothers to look their best on Memorial Day. I watched the cars from the garden, where I was planting seeds of flowers and vegetables. And I got to thinking. Life springs from gardens in a way we can measure and enjoy. You work the soil, plant the seeds, and three months later the black soil is transformed into a place of beauty and bounty. A peaceful spot. At first I thought a cemetery must be the opposite of a garden, a plot of gr...