Loving A Dying Tree

 THE LITTLE TREE,  like all too many human beings, born too briefly into this world of cruel indifference, never really had a chance. It sprouted as a volunteer, , like so many people, unplanned and unwanted. The winds of  fate blew the spring maple seed in the wrong direction landing it in the wrong place, as they do for so many people, people born in the wrong place and time, and the little maple sprouted two feet from my house. It might have survived there, and it might have grown big and healthy, without doing damage to either itself or my slab concrete foundation, but I will never know. During the rainy spring of 2021 it grew quickly to six feet, beautifully, perfectly proportioned. I knew it would grow fast, grow big, and run out of room, and that its teeming, throbbing, searching roots would become ever larger, large enough to crack concrete. Maybe it never would have cracked my foundation, and maybe it would have thrived for decades snuggling against the house, content. but I doubted it, and I couldn't take the chance, not while I still had the chance to do something, I had to try, for my house, for my tree, and , least importantly, for me. My neighbor, a tree trimmer by trade, urged me to transplant it and to not wait long. Bless his heart, he offered to help, and he did most of the work. He dug u p the tree while I dug its new home farther from the house. Beside it he drove a hollow pipe into the ground, for feeding, and I began to feed it daily. Within a day the leaves, one at a time, began to wilt, to be expected from the shock of being moved. As the days went by, the wilting and dying leaves continued, and my neighbor told me not to give up, that it might well live. After a month of the sort of desperate hope we reserve for the dying, I gave up, and cut it down. It had been dead awhile. My theory is that when it was dug up for transplanting, too many roots were left behind, too many roots were cut off too short, and that it entered its new home with too few roots. I will grieve for it forever, like we always do, like I still do for my long dead parents, my long dead friends, my long dead beloved pets. And, like always, the grieving will become less painful every day, until the pain is but a faintly pulsing memory of loss. A tree is a living being, and it feels. I love trees, I loved this little tree, and I always will love its memory, and hope to see it in a happy forest in heaven.