Dear Christmas Tree,
I cried when Jay drove you away to the landfill today.
I’m still weepy. I miss you. There’s a big hole in the living room where you once stood.
I’m surprised at the way you have touched me. How can a tree – a cut-down Christmas tree (that’s already dead, right?) – do that?
I miss your incredible poise and witnessing presence. How you held the space in our house this season. How you allowed us to hang all those silly do-dads and relics from our past. How you stood tall even when one of the strands of lights burned out.
I regret that I didn’t pay more attention to you. I regret that I didn’t take a picture of you as I have with all our past trees, thinking Why bother, they all look the same…
(NOT)
Truth is not all Christmas trees are created equal. You were special. Your proportions were perfect: full and even. You smelled fresh all the way to the end. You didn’t shed any needles. How is that possible?
Thank you Tree for gracing us this year with your incredible sweetness, freshness, fragrance, divine perfection…your presence!
(I hope all our previous trees aren’t hearing this, because I have to say you were the best one ever.)
Farewell dear tree.
With love and gratitude,
Stephanie
p.s. The top photo I know is not you, but I’d like to think that you looked like that once, and may again in some future incarnation.
Hi Stephanie!
I love this post. Trees are such amazing beings, and hold far more in them than we tend to think! And it’s so very interesting that on the day that you wrote this, I, too, made a trip to the landfill–delivering an armchair that had belonged to my grandparents and which was now filled with mold that I couldn’t get rid of. Luckily for the chair, it got a second (third, fourth …) lease on life when the manager of the landfill told me he’d take it (despite the mold). Still, I cried pretty hard as I left–even though the chair was going to still see some use! The chair held so much in that moment that I felt I was “throwing away” of my grandparents, my past … I allowed that weather to flow through, and to feel gratitude that I had the chair as long as I did, and that I have my grandparents’ legacy woven in me other ways than solely in a chair.
I’ve been experiencing quite a bit of weather as I continue through Your Spacious Self. The last tumultuous weather system is detailed some in my latest post, BrightMoon: Creative Fire!.
Thanks for visiting my Tree!
Graces,
Jane