When Great Trees Fall

They died quietly, no fuss, just a slow browning

I’m watching trees fall, six majestic ponderosas, no doubt planted around 1958 when this house was born. They’ve survived the drought until this year when the bark beetles bore through their outer shell to the inner bark where they gorged on soft tissue eventually cutting off the flow of nutrients from the leaves to the other parts of the tree. That’s the extent of my knowledge, basically the poor creatures were strangled from within, victims of the drought, victims of climate change.

They died quietly, no fuss, just a slow browning. I’m going to miss these majestic creatures that have graced my world since we moved here in 2010.

I could have loved them better but now that they’re gone and I can’t tell them how much their life mattered. Not just to me but to the land that fed and bred them, to the morning sun that warmed their shimmering needles and to the blue sky they aspired to reach. All I can promise is that I’ll take care of the family they’ve left behind. I’ll pray for rain and when it doesn’t come, I’ll soak them myself, though I’m conflicted about what’s more important: saving the water or the trees? Maybe some wise soul knows these things?

When you lose someone close, like a husband or child, you may catch yourself saying, “I’m glad they don’t have to witness this loss.” And you might feel like a traitor, because it’s as if you’re saying you’re glad they’re gone, but one of the things that’s helped me through long grief is the comfort of knowing my loved one no longer suffers, the comfort of knowing my husband doesn’t have to watch these great trees he admired tumble to their death.

In this poem by Maya Angelo, she uses falling trees as metaphor for the death of the great souls in our lives. Her words take us through the arc of grief, from the early regrets of missed opportunities when our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines,
gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken until the griever emerges from the dark cold cave to find that peace finally blooms.

It’s going to take some time for me to find peace in the barren patch of land where nature’s magesty once reigned.

When Great Trees Fall 
Maya Angelo

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.