The Worst Part of the Storm…

The worst part of the storm came today… It came in the form of a white van pulling up across the street and parking and a former classmate of mine getting out with his chainsaw. It came when he fired up said chainsaw and headed for my front yard. The first cut hit me like a knife in my own flesh even though he was just working on the part of the tree that we knew for sure was dead. I watched from teh neighbor’s yard for the first few minutes of it and then moved to our driveway as he got further down the tree. I want to cry my eyes out. If I knew how to use a chain saw I would slice a piece of what was left and preserve it for a pot rest or something but I didn’t and I won’t.

Seventeen years ago I went to Meijers and that very tree screamed take me home. I did and it sat potted in our driveway for about a month. I took that tree out to the front yard with my mother and I dug the hole to plant it;  I filled the hole with rabbit manure and dirt to make it healthy to combat the chlorine of the pool.  I filled in the hole and watched the tree grow; I watched it flourish over the years while the little Colorado Spruce struggled behind it.

I watched it bloom and produce fruit each year. I watched a family of doves nest in its branches most years and attack anyone who dared to pick the cherries. I spent hours picking cherries from it. I spent many hours in recent months sitting in a white lawn chair beneath the tree.

That tree shaded my little Cocker Spaniel in his final resting place; it gave me peace knowing that Shadow was lying beneath that tree.

On June 29, 2012 I heard a crack in my front yard during the storm that ravaged my city. I didn’t even think it might be our little flowering cherry tree. It wasn’t until the worst of the storm passed us that I walked out the front door while talking to my mom on the phone and found the tree wounded; the smell of burnt Cherry woood in the air. The tree had been struck by lighening and peeled almost like the start of a banana.

Today I said farewell to a friend; the little tree that held so much for me. I could live without power for more days, but the cherry tree is laying in my front yard in a tangle of branches and logs and I have been wounded.

The tree is gone but I will forever carry in my heart the images of it in full bloom in April or May; the beauty of it when it was crystalized in ice during winter storms and the gentle snow covered branches of it in the dead of a good winter.