These words, spoken by the stage manager in the play, “Our Town,” by Thornton Wilder, came to mind Monday morning as I walked through the cemetery atop Hubbel Hill.

Used to be, years ago, the names on the monuments there were just that to me names names of people I didn’t know. But now, especially in the newer part of the cemetery, to the west, it’s different.

There’s my former piano teacher, and nearby is a fellow student from my days at Tonganoxie High School. There’s Mae Pearson, the librarian who sat behind the wooden desk at the city’s old library, a library that was loaded, from floor to ceiling, with row upon row of treasured volumes.

There’s Harold Champion, a mainstay of main street with his grocery stores and friendly smile.

Of course there’s Sara Mae and Ed Diekman, former owners of Cain’s Drug Store. Everyone knew them and the way they introduced generations of children to reading by letting them devour all the comic books in the rack.

And not far down the line, there’s Edna McKone. Who didn’t have her as a schoolteacher, or at least know her as one?

There’s Thelma Ratliff, who lived from 1908 to 1993. I’ll always remember her as the petite little lady who dressed to the nines in her suit, hats and gloves. And sometimes, she fixed our cherry phosphates at the soda fountain in Ratliff’s Drug Store.

Remember Hazel Bowersox, the First State Bank teller who walked to work, wearing a broad-brimmed bonnet on summer days?

Nearby there’s Grace Schilling, a gem of a lady who lived from 1898 to 1984. To many of us, she was a fixture at Zoellner’s Mercantile, where she fitted children in their first red rubber boots, sold them their first Big Chief tablets and wrapped the purchases in green paper and string.

But it’s the graves of those who died young that take my breath away an infant’s grave decked with plastic pinwheels spinning in the breeze, a young mother buried nearby.

I start to leave before I have walked through the western section, but instead I keep going, for it seems that to leave this area unscoured would be somewhat akin to leaving a wedding reception before meeting all the members of the wedding party.

Meanwhile, the meadowlark sings from a fence post. I think of the drivers of the cars passing along the highway. Do they know of the goodness buried here? Of the wealth of knowledge these beings created, maintained and passed on when they could? Of the love they shared?

And of those who are buried what would they give for one more day of sunshine? Or if they could come back, what would they say?

Would they issue a gentle reminder to hear the birds sing, to see the flowers bloom and to cradle the baby in your arms for as long as you can for as long as you are

Or, as Emily, in “Our Town,” said after she revisited the world she left:

“Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by Grover’s Corners Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? every, every minute?”