In Loving Memory

It is always unsettling when you hear a loud noise in the middle of the night. Something that startles you awake, or maybe only pulls you part of the way from your dream. Many times, we wake in the morning, wondering if we just dreamed the noise, and never figure out what the source was. And sometimes, when the morning light comes, the source of the disturbance is revealed, and you realize something has changed, and it will never be the same again…

I have always held an inordinate level of love for old trees. The more twisted, gnarly, mossy and misshapen, the better. Trees have always held surprises, things that interested me. Birds, nests, ferns, lichen, moss, leaves that changed with the seasons, cones, pods, blooms. Magic shows of light and shadow. Places to climb, to rest, to swing.

There have been many trees in my life, trees that I have loved, trees that have shaped the landscape of my life. Most of the trees did not belong to me, but I still thought of each and every one of them as mine. Is it weird that I ache for the loss of each one?

When I was three years old, my parents built the house that I would live in until I moved away to college. When I think of trees that I have loved, my first beloveds had roots on that property. There was the pie-cherry tree, that I used to climb. It was so old that it had long gone past the point where it could be pruned, to keep the fruiting limbs within reach. So to get to the cherries, I use to scamper up it like a monkey. The cherries were sour, but I loved them. One of my earliest memories of birds is of my father holding me up so I could peer into a deep hole in the fork of the main trunks, looking down into the dark, into the open yellow beaks of a clutch of baby robins. Their mouths wide open, emitting tiny cries for sustenance, and complaining about the intrusion. As a child, I had no concern for the concept of property lines, and it wasn’t until I was older, and the vacant lot next door was developed and the tree was gone, that I realized that tree had not even been on our property. But make no mistake, that was my tree. The same vacant lot was covered with an impenetrable tangle of blackberry vines, and my dad used to make occasional expeditions into the jungle, armed with hacking tools, in an effort to make a few indentations for picking blackberries, to make a trail for us to get to the house on the other side, where friends lived, and to keep the thicket from invading our house. Near the middle of that lot stood an ancient deodar cedar. I used to pick my way through the bramble to reach that tree. At the base of it, there were the remnants of an old foundation. I used to sit on the sun-warmed concrete slab, the surviving pieces resting at the edge of a steep drop off, and look out through the gracefully draping limbs toward the water, enjoying the seclusion of my hard-to-reach perch. From our house, I could see the tree, rising from the thicket, and it used to make me smile, knowing that I had a secret spot at its base.

Also on the edge of the vacant lot, there stood a huge plum tree. It had grown enormous long before our tenure, and every year, the golden plums remained high out of reach, available only to the birds. It had an immense trunk, and offered no branches low enough to climb up. I think I only once tasted a plum from that tree, one that had fallen to the ground, but was still edible. One late-winter day, it finally tipped over, and it was so big, its fallen form covered the lower half of our yard from edge to edge. Not long after it had fallen, my father called me out to the deck, and as we looked down to the fallen giant, we were amazed to see what seemed like hundreds of goldfinches chattering and flitting among the branches. It was as if they had been called in to pay tribute, and they were singing and dancing a farewell performance, filling the branches with song and flashes of brilliant light. The memories of those childhood trees are tangled, like vines, with the sadness over the loss of my grandparents, my childhood home, and my parents’ marriage with it.

There have been other trees: The golden chain tree that shaded my grandmother’s backyard, a fifty foot high wall of yellow chandeliers. The plum tree in her yard, the same kind of plum trees that dotted an orchard on the sloping field of a small park near Chief Sealth’s grave, overlooking Puget Sound. That park was the site of a favorite beach picnic when I was very young, and the memory of walking hand in hand with my grandmother, down the hill to the beach, in the shade of that orchard, is as fresh as if it had been yesterday. The vine maple, high on a rocky outcropping along I-90, that I spotted as a child, and looked for on every trip over the mountain pass, all through college, until I moved away. In the fall, it looked like a cluster of garnet and topaz gems, sprouted there by chance and taken root in a crack in the rock. It must have finally succumbed to its own weight and fallen, because I can still pinpoint the exact location, but the tree is no longer there. It is a good thing I wasn’t around to see it, because its fall would have crushed me. The apricot tree in my husband’s childhood yard, the color of the blooms and fruit inspiring the colors I chose for my wedding. Each and every one of them gone. I know, because I have sought them out in recent years.

There are trees that I have watched on my daily drives: The American Elm trees along Des Moines Way, my husband’s home town, where I keep my office. They were planted in 1921, as a war memorial, and removed a decade ago in the downtown corridor. The City planners used the excuse that they were diseased, but more likely, it was to ease the installation of new sidewalks, a move I find hard to forgive. There are stately evergreens on the grounds of the Masonic Home, an iconic historical landmark that overlooks the sea. A couple of the most magnificent specimens have blown over in high winds, and I mourn them still. Another favorite, a twisted pine tree that curls just so around a telephone pole. My personal landmarks.

The first home that my husband and I purchased had 100 year old Norway Maples that flanked the front corners of the house, like sentries, and the sweeping branches surrounded the house on three sides. My bedroom was on the second floor, and felt like a tree house. From the balcony outside, I could reach out and touch the sturdy limbs, covered in moss and weeping ferns. In the spring, the light filtering through the new green leaves filled the bedroom with a glow that seemed alive. Long after we had sold that house, I drove by one day, and when I saw that the trees had been cut down, my heart skipped a beat. I had not been the owner of that house for years, but those trees belonged to me.

If my husband had a dollar for every time I said “Oh, I just love that tree…”, he wouldn’t have to work anymore. The objects of my affection are numerous and widespread. He has his own obsession, with Pacific Madrones, the giant cousins of rhododendrons. It is an obsession I completely understand, and share. Their sparse, haunted shapes, hanging over rocky bluffs and seaside cliffs, with their smooth red bark covered in papery strips, so inspired me, that I commissioned a textile art piece for my office. I took pictures of madrones from the ferry landings on several of the San Juan Islands, and sent them to the artist. Her final piece, a two dimensional wall hanging, made from antique silk kimonos, hangs in my lobby.

Last night, the noise that awakened me in the dark was like the screeching sound made by the claws of crows, when they have landed by mistake on my skylights, and are slowly sliding down…like fingernails on a chalk board, but magnified. The screeching ended with a boom, and I knew, even in my semi-awake state, that something catastrophic had occurred. I fell back asleep, and when it began to get light, I woke up with a start, realizing the bedroom was too bright. I looked out the window, and was not surprised by what I saw. The sound had come from another fallen giant, a graceful old maple that grew next to my deck. In the seventeen years I have lived here, that tree has given me countless hours of joy. I have spent hours watching hummingbirds rest on their favorite branches between snacks at my feeder. I have spent hours watching the birds from my bedroom, the floor to ceiling windows only feet away from the branches. I have counted the number of species that visit the tree, and marveled that the canopy is so generous, there could be a dozen different bird species in the tree at the same time, and always with room to spare. A flock of bush tits or nuthatches passing through could stop me in my tracks, and I would not move until the last one had flown away. I could see the tree from every room on the south side of my house, and it was always full of activity. I loved the mossy trunk, the lichen covered branches, the way they draped gracefully over the beach, the pattern the dripping branches made in the sand on a rainy day.

The birds seem confused by the change in the landscape. The eagles and great blue herons circle overhead. The kingfisher that used the low branches to fish at high tide is sitting atop the flagpole next door, complaining loudly about the inconsiderate alteration to its hunting perch. The crows are scuffling and cawing in argument in the surrounding evergreens, and the hummingbirds have fled the scene. As the tide recedes, I imagine the ducks and killdeer will sidle by, eyeing the branches with suspicion. I picked up a broken branch to save, a lovely spray of lichen and moss.

After surveying the damage this morning, I went inside to get ready for work. I stood in the shower and cried, seemingly over the loss of the tree, but knowing in my heart that the sadness is tangled up with the emotion of preparing to leave the house I have raised my children in, a garden I have lovingly tended. I am already dreading saying goodbye to my lovely Japanese maple, the canopy of which is the size of a small car. If I could have, I would have dug it up before putting our home on the market. I shielded that tree from the builders who remodeled our home, and pushed back as they cajoled and cursed, complaining that it was getting in the way of their framing, wiring, shingling. One day, they were finding it particularly annoying, and they said if I wanted it to stay so bad, I should stand there and hold the branches out of their way. So I spent the next few hours doing just that. I lovingly tend this tree all through the year. I photograph it almost daily when the leaves begin to turn their brilliant fall colors. When the foliage has dried and curled, I comb the tree, picking off every leaf. I lovingly drape it with a curtain of holiday lights. In late winter, I finger prune the entire canopy, removing any dead branch tips. I have under planted it with snowdrops, trout lilies, ferns and moss. I pass by it every day; I greet it every morning, and it welcomes me home each night.

I started writing this story in my mind, days ago, because I knew, somehow, that this moment was coming. I have looked at the tree every day for the past seventeen years, loving and admiring it, thanking it for sheltering me and my home. Taking picture after picture of it, each one looking to someone else as just a hundred pictures of the same leafless maple. Just yesterday, I was taking pictures of the orchids in my office window, loving how the sunshine was making them glow against the backdrop of the grey day, the grey water, and the lacework of the tree branches behind. Maybe the tree had been whispering to me that it felt old, complaining of aches and pains. Maybe my subconscious mind was registering an imperceptible lean toward the water. Only a few days ago, I had mentioned to my husband that if the tree went over, and pulled up its roots, it would take our sewer lines with it, and wouldn’t that be terrible timing, with our house sale pending. As it was, it politely broke off at the base. In my heart, it was my tree, but it is on my neighbor’s property, so the cleanup and fence repair will be on them. In a final act of what I will choose to view as reciprocal love, as opposed to a result of the laws of gravity and probability, it fell away from my house, covering the neighboring lot from edge to edge. The only damage to me was a hole in my heart, and a pit in my stomach. I fear my thoughts may have been prescient, that I have caused the tipping over…there have been so many times when I have said to myself, “I really love this ring, or these earrings, or this vase”, and next thing I know, they are lost or broken. More than once, I have stopped short with those thoughts, fearful of admitting to loving something so much that its loss would be too hard to bear.

Once again, a lesson of love, loss and moving on. Some things can take up so much of your view of life, that when they are gone, they leave a hole in the sky that feels impossible to fill. A reminder that our lives are filled with things, and people, that we can love, admire, and make part of us, but they are never really ours. That sometimes, when we are having trouble finding the strength to move on, we will be given a sign that now, it is time to go. The ache of loss over a tree, a wedding ring, a home, a loved one, can stay with us for all of our remaining years. But the memory of their existence, the joy that we felt by knowing them, will stay with us.

That hole in the sky will change our view of the world. Light will fill the space. The birds will come and dance on the outstretched limbs, and the sun will shine down and join in the celebration. Life will go on, and there will be other trees to love.

Wall Hanging, by Doris Finch, 2000, Altadena, CA