The Tree

When I was a small child, a giant oak tree grew in my grandparent’s side yard.  It was an ancient thing, the circumference broad and strong.  The roots were gnarled and raised so high above ground that I used them as steps to come from the sidewalk to the yard.  Its trunk was a sloping mountain that I walked up, rather than climbed, to sit in the low hanging branches to look at books or view the world from a higher place.

In late spring wild day lilies spread themselves around its trunk in a glorious orange skirt that, to me, was an exotic and rare display of nature’s flamboyant side. 

But the most delightful thing about this tree was that sometime in its long history, lightening had struck it at its base and had opened the trunk, causing the bottom of the tree to hollow out and welcome a tiny person right into the heart of the old soul. 

I would crawl into that space, where the cool mossy darkness enveloped me, with only a trickle of summer’s heat and light allowed inside.  I would hold secret tea parties and dream big dreams inside the tree’s girth and thought that only I alone could enter.

But one day as I knelt and scooted in I was instantly attacked by a ferocious mother hen who had sequestered her brood inside.  I came out screaming across the yard, baby chicks being scattered asunder, the upper part of my four year old self completely hidden by, what to me, was an enormous winged monster.  My grandfather came running out of the house, down the porch steps, and knocked her off me.  I survived with no more than scratches from her claws and beak.  But I never looked at a chicken the same way again!

When I was eight I came down with Red Measles. I became critically ill as my temperature shot to over 106.  I hallucinated, I cried for my parents to help me.  The doctor came to my bedside because he feared I’d become chilled if taken outside.  A great-grandmother had died at age nineteen from this same illness and doctors speculated I had inherited a weakness, which made the measles more dangerous to me. 

Recovering from the point of death, I learned I was not the only creature who was suffering. 

My parents came into my darkened bedroom to talk to me.  I knew something was wrong by the way they glanced anxiously at each other. They gently explained that the tree was dying, which they had known for some time.  Its slow death probably began years before when the lightening strike had split the trunk.  But today, the electric company was arriving to cut my tree down, because the night before one of its massive limbs had separated from the body, crashing to the street below taking a power line with it. 

I began to cry and beg my daddy not to let them cut my tree down.  His hands were tied. Legally the power company had the right to take the tree down as it leaned over into the street and was now a danger in its advanced decaying state.  I struggled out of bed, hysterical and sobbing, as I heard power saws crank up.  Daddy picked me up and carried me to a window to watch the beginning of the end of my friend.  I couldn’t bear to see it, but I could not turn away. 

It was awful.  It was heartless.  And in my mind, it was murder.

That night I had a back set and became critically ill again.  The doctor was called in and he said it was caused by my distraught emotional state.  He was angry that the electric company had not waited until I was stronger to cut down the tree.  But what company would bother to consider the feelings of a sick child regarding something like this? 

After all, it was just a tree.

Most of the time when we think about our first experience with grieving, we remember losing a family member or even a pet.  But my first encounter with grief was when my giant friend was downed.  That tree was more than a tree to me, he was a friend.  He opened himself up to me and wrapped me around his very being.  He held me in his branches and let me see the world.  That tree was a place of comfort, a place of privacy, a place that was all mine. Well, mine and a mad mama hen.

When I think of home as a small child, I don’t think of my playroom, or my bed, or the kitchen table where I ate my meals.

I think of the tree.