On Monday, I tried to help my parents with this giant beauty that tragically fell during the hurricane. The entire thing uprooted and fell down. Let me tell you...it makes me sick to my stomach to see it go. This tree was over 60 years old. So big that I couldn't wrap my arms around its trunk. It shaded almost the entire back yard.
I played for years under its wide, beautiful branches. This was the house that I spent my entire childhood in, therefore, it was the backyard that held all my adventures as well. Playhouses under this tree. A swing set or two as the years went by. A sandbox. Forts and stages for circuses. A burial ground for loved pets.
There is another tree that stands next to it. Two faithful soldiers forever guarding the children that played beneath them. Now it will most likely have to come down as well because of the damage to its roots. It is over 60 years old as well. Again, sick to my stomach.
It seems so silly to get so attached to a tree. It should be just a background to the life you live. But when their long, thick branches are soaked with childhood games and imaginative adventures and tears and laughter echoes...then they seem like a bit of who you are. Who you were. When you go back to them, you can hear those echoes more clearly than any other place in the world. It's like they hold them out to you within the leaves, kindly asking you to remember. You can close your eyes and hear your 8 year old self playing house and making mud pies in the gentle breeze as it rustles through the leaves. And it makes it all the more difficult to see them stripped of their beauty and chopped harshly into small bits that will be dragged away and burned.
Oh, my, I will miss those beauties. I will. The backyard won't be the same anymore. And those memories will be a little harder to find now without those branches to remind me.
4 comments:
Wow, this would break my heart. I love my trees, but we had to take one out last year due to disease and root damage. I'm still sad every time I drive up to my house. It looks so empty.
How sad! Tree = ♥, even if it seems silly.
Thanks for stopping by!
I completely understand! Kitty-corner to where I grew up was an old, old cemetery. The trees lining the road along the cemetery were enormous...I'd estimate they were planted well over a hundred years ago based on their size and age of the graves.
A couple summers ago the electric company CUT THEM ALL DOWN. 9 or 10 ENORMOUS TREES gone....and then to add insult to injury they left the ugly stumps there. I still feel sad and the sentence "I can't believe they chopped those trees down" comes to mind EVERY SINGLE TIME I drive by there.
I don't know exactly why they were cut...I'd imagine the effort of trimming them away from the power lines was costly and time consuming and perhaps they were beginning to rot on the inside and the worry was they might fall into the street causing damage to cars and/or power lines...I'm not really sure...but they were so old and so impressive it's such a shame. And to leave all the stumps there so ugly and bare...they haven't replanted any trees and the stumps look hideous.
So I understand your sadness over trees :)
Wow. That would be awful! I agree about the stumps. Like a cruel reminder every time you see them.
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