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Grieving for a tree

I was worried that a couple of the huge trees behind our house might fall on it. One was a big cherry that had rot at the base and was aiming for the deck. The other was a gigantic red oak that leaned toward the house, and was so heavy it would crush it.

I arranged with a tree service to cut them down, and, while they were at it, take out several others that might be a threat in the future.

I thought it was the prudent thing to do. I still think so.

Except for one tree.

As it turned out, I cut that one down myself, and I’m still grieving over it. So are others in my family. All of them, I think.

The tree in front of our house, a big red oak, was part of any view out of our picture windows. I can’t recall exactly how big it was when we built the house 40 years ago, when we decided to leave it and cut the driveway circle around it.

Our family grew up with that tree.

Why did I want to cut it down? It was always dropping dead branches, more than seemed normal for a healthy tree. That worried me. One branch was large enough that it broke the windshield on Worshrag’s car a couple of years ago.

It wasn’t a threat to the house, but it did tilt slightly toward the spot where everyone pulls up and stops their car. Anyone under it if it fell wouldn’t have a chance.

I added it to my list of trees to cut down.

Anthony from Columbiana Tree Service scheduled his crew to be here last Monday morning to do the job. I thought I’d get a head start by dropping the red oak myself the day before.

I came in the house to let Honey know I moved all vehicles to a safe distance and was ready to cut it down. She knew I was making preparations, so it was surprising to find her apparently ready to take a nap in the spare bedroom.

“Don’t you want to watch?” I asked my wife.

“No,” she said.

I thought it odd, given that it was something of a landmark event for us. She asked if Shark’s boys, Lamppost Head and The 747, who were with us for the afternoon, were keeping a safe distance. I said they were.

Using my Stihl chainsaw with the 20-inch bar, I notched the oak’s trunk in the direction of the fall, then began the back cut. I had to cut from on one side, then the other, because the trunk, when I measured it later, was 29 inches in diameter. It was solid, with no sign of rot or fault.

The tree crashed down on the driveway and lawn with an explosive sound. I breathed a sigh of relief that it was down safely. . . then felt my first twinge of remorse.

When I came back into the house, Honey was standing in the living room, gazing out the picture windows. The view seemed so empty without the tree.

“I thought you weren’t going to watch.”

“I had to,” she said. “It’s sad. I looked at that tree every day.”

Before beginning to cut the tree up, I took a couple of pictures of Shark’s boys climbing over it, with our house in the background. As I worked, Honey’s words and my own thoughts churned in my mind.

I didn’t know that Lamppost Head had taken probably 50 pictures of the tree earlier in the day. Shark texted 20 of the photos along with this message: “My sentimental son took pictures from every angle so you can always remember.”

Honey was reading when I went to tell her I was sorry about cutting the red oak down. “I wish,” I said, “that you had told me before how you felt about the tree. I miss it, too. Maybe I could have done something else, like having its limbs trimmed back.”

My wife talked softly about how she loved watching the birds and squirrels move through the tree, and seeing it change with the seasons. She wasn’t blaming me, just voicing her memories. She gave words of comfort to my hurting conscience, saying she trusted my reasons, that it was done now and I should not agonize over it.

Yet that night I did agonize over it, lying awake and wishing I could turn back the hands of time.

When dawn came and the tree trimmers arrived, I had made up my mind to cut fewer trees than planned.

I told Anthony and his crewmen, Jared and Eric, about my remorse over the oak. Anthony said he had noticed the number of dead limbs in that tree and wondered about that. That made me feel a little better.

The crew set to work and did an amazing job, climbing to attach a cable to each tree and pulling it uphill and away from the house as it was cut at the base. Their fearlessness and expertise made me realize what an amateur woodcutter I really am.

Today Shark’s boys and I walked the trunks of the two tallest cherry trees with a 100-foot tape to measure them. One was 96 feet, stump to crown, the other 105. The height of the oaks would have been about 100 feet, too, but they were more massive, with one’s stump measuring 39 inches in diameter.

I grieved for those trees, too. They were magnificent. I thought about them in the wee hours and felt the burden of causing their deaths, even while knowing it was the right thing to do. The ones I intended to have cut, but didn’t, I now look at with new appreciation, and gratitude for the chance I had to change my mind.

Honey and I plan to plant a new tree beside the stump of the red oak in front of the house. A redbud would look nice. Should some red oaks sprout from acorns, we may let one or two of them grow, too.

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