My Grandfather's Tree

My grandpa is - was - a simple man.

He liked to draw and read David Baldacci's large print novels. He had an unhealthy obsession with popcorn and enjoyed watching calm sports like baseball and golf. He taught me how to play checkers because I couldn't wrap my mind around chess. He told me to keep my head screwed on straight, to aim high and shoot hard, and that I always looked pretty, even when I really didn't.

Mostly though, my grandpa loved being outside. He grew rose bushes and tomato plants and cared for his pristine green lawn. When I was little, before I moved to Texas, he bought a tree that was just my height. We planted it in the center of his front yard, wrapped the trunk to protect it from roaming deer, and placed a small circle of stones around the soil. It was ours.

As I grew, the tree sprouted exponentially. Every few weeks, my grandpa would send me an email with the tree attached in a photo. 

Once he figured out how to text instead of emailing, the messages were still the same. Photos of trees or clouds or flowers. He'd always comment on the ones in the background of my photos. He'd say that God does amazing work. We rarely saw one another in person, but it felt like we shared something regardless.

It seems unfair, that this tangle of branches and leaves and roots is still here when he isn't. Wrong that he's not sending me photos of our towering tree. Wrong that even though it's springtime, I don't know what color clings to it. Without his eyes to see it for me, our tree is a mystery now.

Death is a part of our reality. The cycle of life and decay, the natural order of taking from the world and giving back to it in death, is something each plant, animal, and person succumbs to. No amount of science can stop it, though we try. But just because death is a known fact, one of our few guarantees does not mean it's easier to comprehend. Death is not a smooth pill to swallow. It's prickly and harsh, sitting in your sinuses and pushing tears from your eyes before settling in your stomach to conjure a nauseating pit of emotions. 

I'm staring at that pill on my desk as I write this. I refuse to even take it because once I do, it's real. I cannot unswallow that medicine. 

My grandpa believed in Heaven, and I hope that's where he is. But I don't believe in much of anything after death. I think we get this one life - this singular, brief existence, and that the before and after and why of it all ruins the mystery. So I look at old pictures of this tree, of all that remains of his singular existence, and wonder about all the places its limbs will stretch to long after I'm gone. 

Will the roots threaten the small house? Will someone tear the tree from the ground and plant it someplace else? Will a bird build a nest amidst the safety of the treetop? Will stray branches be thrown to new dogs or used as swords by playing children? Will lost leaves catch the wind and see themselves all the way to the Great Lakes? Will the trunk eventually be chopped and turned into the same paper he used to read his crime novels on? I don't know. I'm not supposed to.

I wonder if we're meant to leave anything behind at all, or if our best legacy is one that leaves the land we walked on undisturbed. I wonder what my grandchildren will look to when they think of me. I wonder how death will take my tree and hope it is kinder than the methods many of its kin have been subjected to.

Apologies for the morbid reflection, but I had nowhere to put this besides the place we have all set aside to preserve nature together. Thank you for keeping my grandfather's tree alive a little longer.