Beloved Trees, Dying

SEVERAL YEARS AGO I wrote and published for this essay website an essay titled "Loving A Dying Tree". It told the true story of a beautiful little tree which sprang up voluntarily and adorably in my yard, perfectly shaped, but much too close to my house. It was about five or six feet tall, and was quite obviously going to grow up much too close to my house for the health of the foundation or the tree itself. A neighbor of mine, whose profession was trimming trees, verified this to me; that indeed it would eventually crack open the house's foundation, and be hemmed in and probably unhappy in the shade of a house much too close to it for the comfort of either. I mean, this tree was absolutely adorable, precious, like a newborn human baby or puppy or kitten. I couldn't stand to let it die, but the dire warning given to me about my house's foundation rang true and sank in; it seemed almost inevitable. So, I let my neighbor transplant it. From the outset I sensed that he had not dug deep enough, hadn't dug up enough of the tap root, had cut the tap root too harshly, too far up on its body, and had thus doomed it, like an amputation taking more than a mere arm or leg. But I kept my mouth shut, and let him proceed, not wanting to hurt his feelings. l should have helped him dig, but didn't want him to think I didn't trust him, which I shouldn't've. Sure enough, after a few days in its unfamiliar new territory it began to wither and die, a sad process which it completed with inexorable, horrible certainty. I was mad at my neighbor. It seemed to me that he had lazily cut the tap root off much too high, had not dug deep enough and gotten enough roots. Watching that precious adorable tree wilt and die tore my heart open as surely as watching a beloved cat, dog, or human child wither and die. Life, after all, is life, all precious in the eyes of God, and those of this God's child. My essay was a sort of eulogy, much like the essays published yesterday and the day before about my dearly beloved and now dead cat. This must have been ten years ago. I shall remember that precious dead baby of a tree as long as I live, like remembering dearly beloved but deceased dogs, cats, children, parents, and friends. The only way to deal with death is to accept the inevitability of it as a gift from God. I can only vaguely imagine that living forever, here, there, or anywhere, even in heaven, would be a form of torture. Better to be reincarnated, born into this or some other world time and again, than to live forever in a single world, though ever changing, somehow eternally unchanging even so. Had I been born, for instance, several hundred years before Christ, I truly believe that by now I would have long since begun to long for my own demise, having witnessed or participated in the fall of Rome, the middle ages, the Renaissance, our modern world, both World Wars, and all. The infinite value of life is deeply rooted in its fleeting nature, its intrinsic and sacred value in its shortness. My precious little doomed tree didn't live long, but it lived well, was loved deeply, and perhaps even knew it. Now as I see thousands of trees here in the Ozark Mountains turning brown and dying, my heart breaks and my eyes weep for the drastic, tragic unfair suddenness of their life and possible death. It is not their time to die. They are being murdered, by climate change of human manufacture, and the terrible drought resulting. I pray for rain, and for life extension of our beautiful trees. I want more for them than to merely remain forever in my loving memory.