This column is often written in a form called the personal essay. “Personal essays relate the author’s intimate thoughts and experiences to universal truths,” is one definition. “Universal” seems a bit much for mine. Maybe “township truths.”

Sometimes personal means my thoughts on picking rocks or watching baseball. This one is deeper personal.

I have referenced Dean’s passing before and some unfinished processing by this writer. Each of us has losses and even traumatic events in our lives. “Processing” those is never really finished. They reappear at random and unexpected times. We can suddenly be back in that moment.

I wrote a tongue-in-cheek column about the 50th Anniversary of My Home run. That happened in April of my senior year. It was fun looking back. I was talking with nephew Jay on my phone about that. Jay’s a few years younger, and he recalled that was the spring Dean died.

I knew that but hadn’t linked them in my head right then. I was sitting in a tractor cab parked in our shop. After we hung up, I found tears coming to my eyes. “Oh my God, that’s right. Dean was dying then.”

May 24 was a Friday in 1974, as it was this year. On that day 50 years ago, I didn’t go to our teams’ baseball game. There was a wake at the O’Hare Funeral Home and a funeral at St. Mary’s. There were lots of people coming and going. We still had milking and chores to do. A week later, I graduated. More people were around. The time is a giant jumbled ball of dissociated and mostly bad memories.

I’ll back up and tell about Dean in a much too brief manner. Dean was born 16 months after me. A healthy baby, we were destined to be playmates, bound together as brothers on the farm. We would be, but the story took a turn. When Dean was 2, my older sister noticed something not right with his eyes.

My mother spent time with doctors in New Ulm, Minneapolis, and New York, desperately trying to save Dean’s sight. In the end, something called retina blastoma took that. In the spring of 1959, Dean became blind. I was 3; he was 2. As children will, we didn’t dwell on what we didn’t have. We found ways to play with four hands, four legs, and two eyes.

Dean was a gifted boy. He learned to read at the Faribault Braille School. He went there from first through ninth grade, my mom gamely driving him there on Sundays and bringing him home every Friday. I rode along, continuing our play in the back seat. Those are memories that are timeless and distant.

The plan was that Dean would come to St. Mary’s his sophomore year, my junior year. Thanks to some wonderfully helpful staff and classmates, he was succeeding. Also, great credit to our mom who filled in whatever extra reading and help Dean needed. My mom was a force, committed to her son in a way only a parent could know.

When Dean began to get headaches around Christmas, it hardly seemed serious. But taking aspirin gave way to seeing a doctor which led to tests and finally a diagnosis of the brain tumor which would kill him. A number of treatments were tried, not unlike the attempts to save his sight. Again, those failed.

I thought about why I’m writing this. “Keeping his memory alive” came to mind. I’m not sure of the efficacy of that. There are a shrinking number of people who saw him play piano or heard his infectious laugh. I know from conversations, Dean moved people in his last days with his courage and the gracious way he dealt with dying.

I can write about those things, but it doesn’t bring it back. In the end, I can’t keep his memory alive, as noble as my intent might be.

It was a life cut short. All of us have people in our lives who left too soon.

Then, what is too short?

Who can say that?

Feet away from Dean’s burial marker is an older one. It says, “BABY, MICHAEL M. RADL, 1910-1910.” Michael had 16 less years than Dean.

Around Dean’s death, there was more sadness. On May 17, our cousin, 30-year-old Tom Krambeer, died in an automobile accident near Park Rapids. On May 21, 21-year-old Tom Hertling died in a boating accident on Sleepy Eye Lake. Both those young men certainly had plans that were violently taken from them.

I remember hearing then that, “Deaths come in threes.” Of course, they don’t. But it is one of those ways we try to make sense of the senseless.

In Sleepy Eye, the horrible tragic death of four young men in a car accident in March 2014 is still much in mind. Talk about lives cut short. I wrote this then:

“There is a temptation to say their lives were ‘incomplete’ or ‘unfinished.’ That is unfair to their memory. We wanted them to have more time, to go out to the world, to have longer stories. But our lives are like books and there are many types of books. ‘Les Miserables’ is 1,500 pages. “The Old Man and the Sea” is ninety pages. Each is full, complete, and valuable. Each is to be treasured.”

Ten years later, I still feel terribly sad that those boys died.

And I wonder again what would they have made of their lives?

And Dean?

Would he have gone into music with his gifts?

Teaching, law school, were things he talked about. All those are empty holes now.

The processing I mentioned includes regrets that I became disengaged at the end of Dean’s life. I talked about that to friend Judy Surprenant, long time school counselor. Judy said that 18 is an exactly bad age to experience that. There is so much swirling around us as we move from teen to adult, it can be difficult to be in the moment. I suppose that is my excuse, although regrets won’t recede.

Fifty years on, I’m no closer to understanding why my brother was taken. Dean did tell my mom that he felt he’d had a full life, and she shouldn’t be sad. Is that comforting? I don’t know.

“It’s God’s plan.” That’s another of those things we say to make sense of the senseless. So much is mystery to us mortals. I’m not sure about God’s plan. But, in the words of the old hymn, I do believe “We Shall Meet Again.” Godspeed Dean.

I took a photography class in college. On the first day, Brother Zarr informed us that he didn’t want to see any photos of old people or kids. Anyone can shoot a picture of an old guy on a corner or a kid on a swing. It doesn’t take any creativity.

Writing about spring is like that. Whatever blogger or columnist you read is writing about spring right now. It’s such an amazing season of transition, green exploding everywhere, life rushing back to a comatose landscape. It doesn’t take any creativity.

Spring comes on us small and subtle at first: small buds, daffodil blossoms close to the ground, grass shifts from a dead green to a live green. Then one day, you look out and rhubarb is two feet tall with leaves the size of Iowa. There is nothing subtle about rhubarb.

I am especially glad to see our rhubarb this year. In a fit of cleaning up the garden last fall, Pam mowed it. She’s like that. She starts cleaning sometimes and can’t control herself. She wants everything clean. It’s not a quality we share.

Anyway, I expressed my concern that she may have harmed the rhubarb. We agreed to disagree, although I didn’t really agree. Our marriage survived and now the rhubarb is up. All is good. I love you, Pam.

That patch of rhubarb has been there since before me. I never thought to ask my parents about its origin. It’s always been there, the first thing to grow with such gusto every spring.

Rhubarb is not native to North America. Somewhere back in the 1800s, someone brought crowns or seed from the old country, probably unsure it would grow here. I’ll never know who that was or how the forebears of this rhubarb got to our farm. Trees, animals, and people have come and gone; the rhubarb outlasts them all.

That part of the garden is fifty feet from a corn/soybean field. Occasionally herbicide spray drift has wilted things in the garden. Not the rhubarb. I think our rhubarb is indestructible. That includes indiscriminate mowing.

Rhubarb’s main attribute is that it is the first edible of the spring. It’s an interesting flavor in jelly and desserts. It needs to partner up with something sweet to offset it’s tanginess.

When I was a kid, I took my mom’s sugar bowl out back and dipped stalks of rhubarb in the sugar before chomping them. In research for this column, I took Pam’s sugar bowl and tried that. (Don’t tell Pam; she also has this thing about double dipping.) I don’t think it will be the next food sensation, but prep time is minimal. It’s healthier than Twinkies.

Rhubarb has its limits. But the exciting thing about it is that it signifies the beginning of the Season of Eating. Eight months of fresh things from the land are in front of us. After that, we fall back into the four months where snow is all there is to consume off the land.

A lot of us are gardeners in rural places like this. Pam and I are in the group of Gardeners with Occasional Success. If we had to depend on our ability to grow food for our survival, we’d been gone long ago. But there are farmers’ markets and friends who share from their bounty. So, we eat pretty well.

The Season of Eating will soon offer those first things that can go in the ground, things that can handle a bit of frost. Radishes, green onions, leaf lettuce are all spring eating. Soon after, come garden peas. Heaven forbid, temperatures turn too hot for those delicates. A sumptuous green pea can turn into a starchy pebble in hours.

Friends Greg and Cathy Roiger always plant potatoes on Good Friday, per the old gardener’s tradition. Sometimes that means scratching away snow to perform that duty, but I always admired their commitment.

Whenever you get your potatoes in, if you can dine on boiled new potatoes dabbed in butter with green onion chunks in June, that is as close to the divine as you can get in this life.

The middle of summer brings green beans. A little later comes sweet corn. Now, we are full in the glory of local eating. Both of those also take full advantage of the ability of butter to make literally everything better.

The curse that was margarine has mostly been lifted. Whatever crazed scientist invented margarine has hopefully been exiled to some desert island where he can spend his days, forced to eat Blue Bonnet on Wonder bread.

At some point in summer, melons get good. I’ve never had luck growing those, but I enjoy the water and musk types that come up from Missouri and Iowa. You might have to buy one or two mediocre ones, but when you get a good one, oh my.

Among my favorite vegetables and healthiest to eat are broccoli and cauliflower. I’ve mostly given up growing those. In the race to consume those between me and the cabbage loopers, I always finish second.

When we come to August, it is the time of tomatoes and zucchini. Now the possibilities become endless. There is so much you can do with these staples of the veggie world. The good news is they are among the easiest to grow. Most years tomatoes and zucchini are rhubarb-like in their ability to thrive.

They can even tolerate a few weeds. I mentioned Pam and I are Gardeners with Occasional Success. Speaking of weeds, I can tell you the moment each summer that keeps us from being Great Gardeners.

We keep the garden reasonably weed-free through June. Then comes a July day when it’s hot and muggy, and weeds are giving one last push to conquer territory. I’m on the screen porch, listening to the Twins game on the radio, with a cold Grain Belt in my hand. Right then I could go weed another time. Or I can succumb to relaxation.

The spirit is strong, but the flesh is weak. I stay on the screen porch. The next day the weeds have won.

The Season of Eating winds down in the fall when we bake the first squash. Acorn, butternut, and buttercup are each unique and each good. And their aggressive vines thrive amidst the weeds that I gave up on in July.

All that delightful eating begins now. The rhubarb tells us that.

There, I wrote about spring. Maybe I’ll go take a picture of an old person. Hey, I can take a selfie!

Raise your hand if you remember Vic Roznovsky?

Unless this gets to Vic’s hometown of Shiner, Texas, that would be none of you.

We used teams of cards to “run the bases” while the dice dictated the action. Our lineups were mostly stars: Harmon Killebrew, Bob Gibson, Willie Stargell. Scattered in were players who had funny names or looked funny on their baseball card. Vic, bless his soul, checked both those boxes.

A while ago, Scott Surprenant used Vic Roznovsky to fill a square for Immaculate Grid. That’s an online game where you identify ballplayers who fit categories. Scott somehow knew of Vic, and one day he fit a spot. It was a great play. The rarer the player, the better the score. Few are rarer than Vic.

A group of us share our answers from the day before. When I saw Scott had used Roznovsky, I called to tell him about my connection to that name. Then an odd thing happened. As I was talking to Scott about our boys’ game, I began to feel sad.

The only people who could know about the special status of Vic Roznovsky (and Paul Popovich and Ivan Murrel) to three boys in 1967 are me and two others who are gone. My brother Dean died in 1974 and my nephew Scott in 2019.

My nephew spent parts of summers at our farm. During those, he joined Dean and I as steadfast playmates, the way kids landlocked on a farm back then were. There were chores to do, but also time to take adventures to the creek, conquer the rock pile, and play dice baseball.

My parents are gone now. They would know of the times I spent with Dean and Scott. The Vic Roznovsky moment reinforced that I was the lone holder of memories from those long-ago summers.

By nice coincidence, I ran into Fred Braulick a few days later. He reminded me that I taught dice baseball to him when we were fourth grade buddies. I smiled as we recalled:

2’s a triple, 3’s a double, 4’s a single, 5’s a sacrifice, 6 is an out, 7’s a double play, 8’s an out, 9’s a strikeout, 10’s a walk, 11’s a single, and 12’s a homerun. Fred made me feel not so alone with a memory.

I suppose that’s the natural way it is for memories. They can be shared for years. But then the participants disappear, till one remains who holds that story or event alone in their mind. And when that person leaves, it is gone. Maybe it gets written down or recorded. It might exist on paper or even video. But that’s different than in someone’s thoughts. It is the difference between an organic thing and inorganic thing.

In 2022, I lost good friend Dean Brinkman. Dean had lots of friends; I was blessed to be one. When he left us suddenly and tragically, I was left with the things that we shared. It was stories and events. But it was more reactions, ways of glancing at each other, knowing what the other was thinking. A quick phrase could mean a hundred different things. Since Dean had limitless energy, time spent with him was always planting new notions like that.

It is that way with friends. Small triggers can release a cascade of shared thoughts and feelings that accompany them. I don’t know how many times since Dean left, that I heard or saw something that made me think for a fraction of a second, “I’ve got to tell Dean this.” Then, “Oh. Yeah.” It can take a while for reality to be real.

I remember that with my dad when he died. He was still active on the farm up to his passing at the age of 90. Everything I did in my farming career was rooted from him, first as a boy hanging out in the barn. Later, me helping him, and later still, him helping me.

There wasn’t a day when we weren’t aware of what the other was doing. Along with that came the likelihood we knew what each other was thinking. When he was gone, there was a while I had brief thoughts of wanting to tell him something. Then, “Oh. Yeah.”

In every relationship, one will go first. The remainder will be left to store the memories that were created in that relationship. Memories are like pie; you can eat it alone, but it’s more fun to share.

I mentioned the natural order of things, and most of us will lose our parents. For our early years on Earth, there is no one else who spends more time with us. In a way, it’s an unbalanced relationship. There are years children won’t remember and the parents will recall vividly.

We know those years that are a blank in our memory bank are critical to our development. All the silly words and faces we make with our baby and toddler are essential brain growing time. Perhaps it’s good our memory vault is limited as parents. We remember funny lines our two-year old said, and we block out the diapers and cleaning up baby puke.

Again, the right and good order is for our parents to die when we are grown. Sometimes, the order is upended, and the child dies before the parents. There is a special sadness when the parents are left with a giant pool of memories of someone who’s future was cut short.

I think, too, about Pam and me, and that one of us will go first. Talk about a stockpile of memories to be left alone with. It is something half of us who are married will face. Some, for a long time. Others, like my parents who died six months apart, a short time.

Someday each of us will be gone. We’ll leave behind all those we interacted with and their memories of us. There will come a time when all those people will be gone, too.

Then, we will be a name on records and articles and of course a tombstone. Maybe our ancestors will tell stories that remain. But true memory of us will be gone from the Earth. It will be the turn of others to make memories with each other.

All this, from Vic Roznovsky.