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Illustration by Juliana Nuefeld
I’ve always loved trees. When I was a young lonely child filled with imagination, I made a companion of everything. This was war-time England and being short of toys, I used whatever I could. A smooth stone; discarded buttons; pieces of wood. For a while my beloved trusty friend was a tree branch I’d picked up in the park. It became my staff, and I took it everywhere. It was handsome. The smooth dark bark gleamed. It was the right height for a trusty staff, the right circumference for a small hand to hold. However, this was not apparent to our neighbour who was cutting firewood. My staff was just another piece of wood he could use. Before I could protest, he picked it up, put it on his bench and sawed it in two. Gone in a few minutes. I grieved.
It’s probably not surprising that I continued with this love of trees as I grew up. We talked. They comforted me, advised me. On stormy days, they scolded me, (misdemeanours not apparent) chattering angrily with their swaying branches. Later of course, when things grew calmer and the winds died down, they demurely folded their hands apologetically.
The maple in our front yard was already a teenager when we moved in. It grew steadily over the next 40 years into a magnificent tree with a massive trunk which forked into leaf laden branches. We went through many, many seasons together and looking out of the window I could determine where Spring was at. Tiny buds on the bare branches? Yep it was going to happen all right. Then this summer we got the bad news. Our tree was diseased. If one of the branches were to snap off during a fierce wind, it would fall directly on our house and cause a lot of damage. The tree was strictly speaking, owned by the city and the arborist said they could not risk it. Our tree had to come down. Even that relatively slim branch swaying gracefully over the roof was dense and heavy. It was potentially dangerous. There was no choice. The day of execution was set.
I notified our near neighbours and a little to my surprise I discovered most of them felt the way I did. Jen said she often worked from her third floor room and drew inspiration from the play of light and shadow across her window as the branches moved and swayed. I put up a notice saying farewell, which I pinned on the tree. Passersby stopped to commiserate. They understood why I would be upset. Even the arborist, an efficient man in an orange glow-vest didn’t lift his eye brows when I said how sad I was to see the tree come down. I muttered something about the tree seeming like a creature to me. Alive and communicative. He nodded. He made the point that the city would plant another tree for us in the front. The only reason he had to take down this tree was because it was diseased. I had to trust him. It sure looked healthy to me.
As word got around of the exact day of execution, another neighbour, Lynne, suggested we have a farewell group hug. Agreed. We got together that evening. We held hands and stretched around the tree and in different ways said thank you to it. Many words of loss. It was lovely to connect with these people who had shared this stretch of the street with us for so many years. Okay. What were we upset about? Time passing? The inevitability of mortality? At a certain age, the loss of loved things, even trees that actually outlive us? Pets that don’t. Friends that are now hid, as Shakespeare wrote, “in death’s dateless night?” It was surely all of these things.
We’ve kept two pieces of the trunk and the stump is now supporting a pot of autumn flowers, the trailing ivy‚ like hair swirling around the bole. That darn old tree doesn’t look in the least distressed at its new state which I must admit is comforting.
Maureen Jennings lives in Toronto.