Leaves & Losses

On holding grief and hope

Two years ago 

​One glance at the treehouse, and I was sold.

Aly Prades

​I’d been browsing homes on Redfin for months, and the results in our price range were underwhelming.
​
But this house! This yard! This magical tree!

I started fantasizing about our future, tree-saturated existence. If I were going to give up year-round beach weather and my friends and family, then gosh darn it, there better be trees!

I thought about that house in the shower. I sent screenshots to friends. I plotted the walking distance to the local school, to my husband’s workspace, to the library, and nearest hiking trails.

I had agonized about the decision to move, but felt no hesitation about this home.

And now we’re here.

​The house is real. The life is real. The walks to school and work and the lake and library are real. The leaves and sunlight, and sense of home are real.

Two Months Ago
Wind whipped across the baseball field, and a flash of lightning struck in the distance.

“We’re calling it,” the team mom reported to the parents in the bleachers. We schlepped our field dinners and my son’s baseball gear back to the car as thunder echoed.

I was happy for the shortened game, happy to get home before bedtime, happy to have more time to prep for my first art show that would take place the following day.

At home, the wind howled, and rumbles of thunder lasted longer than I thought possible. The kids begged to watch a show, and I added last-minute price stickers to my art prints. My husband was performing in a local community theater show, so it was just me and the kids until after bedtime.

The thunder progressively grew louder, longer, and closer to the flashes of lightning.
Then a thunderclap pierced the sky at the same time I heard a sickening crack, crack, crash, boom.
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Heart thumping, I gingerly opened the back door. In the twilight dark, I could barely see that a massive branch of our beloved tree had crashed down across the yard, onto the fence, and into the neighbor’s yard.
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Branch is misleading. This part of our tree is the size of a regular tree. The broken trunk extended out to the back alley, resting on the power and phone lines.

​My brain could not compute what I saw. Our massive tree. Our magical tree. My tree. Cracked and broken. Littering the lawn, dissecting the fence, branches strung out across the top of the neighbor’s RV. Oh God, I hope no one was in there.

I am a sucker for anxiety, for making up what-ifs and fears of making a mistake. This physical fear sank into my bones. A pit pounded in my stomach. The word harrowing kept coming to mind.

Are we safe here? In our own home?

I herded the kids into my room and told them to put on a funny show while I called the power company and the non-emergency police line for a welfare check on the neighbors. I was embarrassed to tell the dispatcher that I didn’t know the neighbor’s address or last name — that I was too scared to venture out in the storm and check on them myself.

When my husband finally got home from his show, I breathed a sigh of relief, but the pit in my stomach remained.
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Are we safe here?
​

In the light of day, the damage was even scarier. You could see just how massive the tree was, how narrowly it missed the neighbor’s, how fortunate that it fell in the only direction straight away from the house, from us.
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The writing was on the wall — or on the tree.

​“Is that hollow? Is that rot?” my dad replied when I sent him dark, blurry texts of the damage.

No, no.

I was convinced our tree had been struck by lightning. The simultaneously flash and boom. What else could take this giant down?
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​Days later, the arborist confirmed and heightened our concerns.

“It’s a crying shame, but this tree has got to come down. It’s in imminent danger of falling on the house. Could be five minutes, could be two years.”

Imminent danger of falling on the house.

This is not something you can unhear. And though we’d been staying at the house, blissfully ignorant, this was a risk we weren’t willing to take.

We scheduled the full removal, and I walked around in a daze. Insurance covered the cleanup of the branch that fell but wouldn’t cover any of the tree removal.

So now we had to pay — a lot — to destroy my favorite part of our home.

This was a Wednesday. My in-laws were en route from San Diego and supposed to stay with us — at our now death-trap house. The tree removal wouldn’t start until the following Wednesday.

A week, an Airbnb generously paid for my in-laws, and a sleepover at a friend's house later, the tree guys came with their lifts and chainsaws, and crane.

Buzz of chainsaw

bite of blades

thump of falling branches

dappled light succumbs to sky

By this point, my desire to sleep in my own bed outweighed my grief over the tree. By Wednesday night, they’d hacked off all the branches and leaves, and our yard was a graveyard of logs and sawdust. I almost drove past my house because I didn’t recognize it without the cradle of leaves. No more dappled shade and dancing shadows. No more magic.

So much sky.

Sky I didn’t want. Sky I didn’t ask for. Sky I resented for its sunset beauty.

If the tree had been a symbol of God’s goodness, his special gift to me, the sky screamed loss—at least for now.

Two months ago, my dear friend’s sister, Marie, passed away unexpectedly. I returned from her Celebration of Life the day before the tree fell. They are linked for me: the loss of the tree, the loss of Marie.

So much loss.

I didn’t want to look at the bright side. I didn’t want a blank slate of a yard. I didn’t want to start over.

I wanted to be sad.
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I still want to be sad.

Moments of gratitude find me anyway.
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I attended a writing workshop on the Art of Noticing. The facilitator asked us to take a photo of something close by. I noticed the window in front of my son’s desk in the office. Green leaves rustled in the breeze, vines crept up the side of the house, lilac trees bordered our side yard.

There is still goodness here. Goodness we don’t manufacture, only receive.

My son’s art is taped to the window — Pokémon and baseball bats, other masterpieces gifted to him by his sister. Goodness we create ourselves.
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In the center of his window is a list of names of my son’s friends and family members, a quick spelling reference sheet for when he wants to write birthday cards or send letters. Goodness we share with others.
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We held a goodbye ceremony for the tree. We shared favorite memories and gave it one last hug. We marked the moment. Tears fell as we remembered the good.
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​I went to the lake. With water as my witness, I wrote:
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Our tree must come down
my heart cracks and splinters 
like fallen limbs

​inside the magic and mystery
rot and hollow

my stomach churns, burns

I hold both: grief and hope

grief at the lost magic, the death of a dream 
of endless summers 
bathed with leaf light

hope that new things

may bring unexpected delight

backlit leaves replaced with sky
shifting shadows supplanted by stark sun

help me find the good
help me sit with the loss

gratitude springs, unwelcome
for this tree
and the magic that brought me here --
to North Idaho
here --
to cold plunging
here --
to painting
here --
to healing
here --
to a life I love

tree glory, a spark, a pull, a prize
— a poet, I grieve the loss of symbol
— a painter, I mourn the absence of imagery

help me find the good
help me sit with the loss

dappled dreams are made of sun and
shadow

Now
Since the tree fell, I’ve been working on sprucing up the backyard. Not making up for or replacing the loss, but choosing to find goodness and reasons to delight anyway. 

My dad reattached the treehouse ladder and boarded up the hole where a branch once went through the floor. He added a flower box that I planted with strawberries and petunias. 
​

My mom and I planted flowers in the empty beds. I am planning to paint flowers on the back fence with the support of artsy and non-artsy-but-willing-to-help friends. 

​Now, when I look out at my yard, I see both: grief at what was lost and hope that beauty lives on. 

*If you happen to be artsy, or just willing, let me know if you’d like to help paint our flower mural in the next few weeks!

In His Name, Aly