Eulogy for a tree

March 5, 2010
by Rita Tobin

I was making a video of Friday’s storm for my cousin in Southern Florida, when what had been intended as a portrait of wintery splendor, turned into an episode of reality TV.  I had opened the front door and, wrapped in my parka, was filming branches laden with snow, and the dogs larking in the drifts, when a figure that had been obscured by the white haze enveloping our front lawn, suddenly began to speak.  That figure turned out to be my husband, and he was not delivering good news.

“The tree is destroyed,” he said sadly.  Realizing that he was standing next to the graceful, 30-year old shade tree that embellished our front lawn, I peered harder through the flakes, and saw that the trunk of that beautiful tree was now split into three pieces, two of which were flapping in the wind, like broken wings. 

“Oh, no!”  I cried out.  “Can it be saved?” 

“No,” my husband responded grimly.  “It’s gone.”

“This is really upsetting,” I am heard to say on the video.  “We loved that tree.”

We had seen the tree before we saw the house.  As the realtor drove us through Lawrence Farms East on our way to a house that, while it had not met any of our criteria, we figured we’d look at anyway, we’d marveled at the deep lawns and stately old trees lining the streets.  We felt as though we were driving back into history, and indeed we were, since many of the homes in the area are more than forty years old.

The house that we were viewing, however, appeared to have been an afterthought.  Tucked into a corner of the cul-de-sac, it lacked the expansive lawn of its neighbors; indeed, much of the property was wetlands, a/k/a swamp.  The sunroom, built many years after the house had been completed, stood on exposed, concrete pillars, and the whole place needed a paint job.  Yet, on the front lawn, shading the house and setting it off from the road, stood a large shade tree. Its branches rising into the air, and then falling, gracefully, back to earth, the tree gave the house character, and an attitude.  Here, it said, is peace, quiet, and space; everything that you are leaving the City to acquire. 

“What kind of tree is that?”  I asked. A Manhattanite to my bones, I was familiar with three kinds of trees:  Central Park, apple and Christmas.  The realtor did not know, but that was okay.  I liked the look of the place, and I loved that tree. I was sold almost before we entered the front door.

At the closing, I turned to my husband and said, “Now we own trees. That feels so weird.  I’ve never owned a tree before.” 

“Yes, and trees fall down,“ he responded.  He had already noted three dead trees on our property.  “We’ll have to take care of those trees, not just look at them.”

Over the next four-and-a-half years, his predication proved to be true:  trees fell down.  One just missed the deck. Another landed on our vegetable garden.  This past summer, a rotted, roadside tree toppled before the town could remove it, pulling down four of our healthy trees as it fell. In spring 2007, the chimney was struck by lightening, sending Masonite all over the backyard, blowing out the air conditioning, water heater, computers and most of our lights, and damaging numerous trees. (Thankfully, we, the dogs and the neighbors were all inside at the time, and there was no fire.) 

Yet the tree-with-no-name remained on the front lawn, reviving each spring, turning bright red in the fall, providing shade and privacy to all.  Our younger lab, Chloe, liked to lie beneath it on a hot summer’s summer, while the older lab, Jason, chewed twigs and leaves as they fell to the ground in the fall.  When I rode down our street each weeknight, after a hard day’s work, I’d see the tree in the distance, and know that I’d arrived home.  When the tree began to bud in early April, I knew that spring had finally arrived.  When visitors told us that our new house was lovely, we knew that our tree had helped create that good first impression. 

Despite all the adventures that we’d had since moving to the “country” – including the lightening strike – we never had considered the possibility that our healthy, strong tree might be brought down.  Even as I heard branches cracking on Thursday night and Friday morning, and the power went out at 7:30 a.m. (no surprise; the lights had been flickering all night), I never for a moment thought that our front-yard tree might become one of the casualties.  Of all our trees, it had seemed among the healthiest. Nor was it rotted, or surrounded by older, taller trees that might fall upon it. 

By Sunday afternoon, however, the remains of our beautiful tree lay in a neat stack at the edge of our driveway, while the decapitated trunk remained in the ground, white and naked where the ax had exposed its interior.  We surveyed the rest of the destruction.  All around us, branches still lay on the road.  Our mailbox had been smashed by a snowplow.  The front hood of one of our cars hood had been dented by a falling branch.  Another branch had pulled down the deer fence.  Yet none of this was really a very big deal. The big deal was our tree.

Standing in the road, we regarded our house. It looked bleak and ordinary – all the magic had gone.  A Google search had turned up several sites that sold trees, but that hadn’t comforted us.  “Our” tree, the one that had drawn us to the house that we might never otherwise have looked at, the house that had become our home, was gone.

While it seems silly to write a eulogy for a tree, we didn’t want its life to go unnoted.  We still don’t know its species, but we do know that it provided shade, beauty and peace for the family that lived in our house for 30 years – a couple and their three daughters – and has given us similar pleasure and comfort for the nearly five years that we have lived in Chappaqua.  Our family will miss that tree.  Yet we know that the memories that it has provided have nurtured all those who have enjoyed its beauty and shade, and that the seeds that it sent out across New Castle each spring, have spawned trees that are creating memories for many other families as well.