Fall 1996 - Issue Number 37
By G.S. Brook
Each tree has its own message. Nothing lives in just one place as long as a tree. Nothing is so shaped by the singular unigueness of one space as is a tree.
Trees are the nexus of earth and sky, their growth above the earth's surface reflectlng their growth beneath it. Their branches reach skyward absorbing sunlight while their roots tunnel deeply absorbing water and minerals.
Not just earth and sky, perhaps trees are the nexus of the material and immaterial world, as well. Focussed on one space, with leafy filaments of life spread like a million tendrils among the world's invisible spirits, perhaps trees perceive things too ephemeral for men. Perhaps trees are as sensitive to people's souls as to the wind. People affect the physical shape of trees with pruning and carving - perhaps there is also a spiritual impact. A tree's reaction to that spiritual impact might create physical change, a visible message.
My recognition that trees hold messages is a gift I received from my Father as he died. I heard my first message two days before his death in an experience totally wrapped up in my own involvement with his passing.
When a loved one dies, be still and receive their gift to you. The gift may seem unclear until years later, but unless you are still and receptive, you may miss the gift entirely. This can be a miraculous connection wherein death is given meaning &emdash; a spark of life &emdash; and life is enriched by death.
The day before I sensed the tree's message I drove the six hours from Wisconsin to my native Mlchigan to help Mom bring Dad home from the hospital. He was recovering from another cancer-induced health crisis, his third in the past 12 months.
My Dad would never make that trip home.
I walked into the hospital room in Ann Arbor, expecting to see my Dad almost ready to be released. Instead I saw my Mom and Sister, upset and having obviously spent the night in the room. Dad had taken a final turn for the worse just a couple nights before, between the time I last talked to my Mom and my arrival in Mlchigan. Death was knocking on the door, as it had so many times throughout my Dad's life. This time, however, Death would not be turned away.
Early the next day I was alone in my parents' house, the post-dawn sunlight streaming in from the windows facing East. On this never-to-be Homecoming Day I now had nothing to do. I decided to walk around the small island at the mouth of the Detroit River &emdash; Hickory Island &emdash; that had been my parents' home ever since I was six years old.
Tree after tree extended along the waterfront. Almost all of them were large, majestic trees soaring skyward from the dormant grass. Barren branches clawed at the cloudless sky as the cold November wind blew inland from "Slow, Endless Flow that Erie; Path of French Pathfinders; Border over which British Fought Americans and Blacks Escaped Slavery; Carrier of Ships for Industry and Restorer of Souls." All around the lsland it was the same -- blue sky, wind, barren trees.
My Dad was dying.
It was good to take this walk, to see again the beauty of the island where I grew up. I had to get outside, it was too painful to stay at home. Today the beauty of the lsland was a simple, sparse thing. Clear cold air, cloudless sunlight, barren trees, there were few distractions, few animals about, no flowers, no summer smells of grass, even the autumn's fallen leaves had been cleared away. In such simple, elemental moments the spirits' silent world is almost audible.
Making the final turn on my island-encircling tour, the turn that brought my Parents' home into sight, I stopped to stare. A single tree covered with bright yellow leaves dominated the view. It was the Norway Maple in front of our house -- the only tree on the waterfront with colorful leaves. So striking was the tree's appearance that the Maple's spirit captured my consciousness --
Me!Look at me! I love him too. He is my Father also! He planted me in this wondous location on this river -- he watched over my growth. I have saved my last brilliant yellows for his return from the hospital. I have held onto my leaves as long as can -- it was 25 degrees last night -- I must let them go now.
The tree had heard Dad's cries of misery at the hospital, the cries for the Lord's mercy to take his pain-wracked soul. The Maple knew now that Dad was not coming home.
The Maple could release its leaves.
Walking toward the tree now, I wondered what mystical concentration of energy kept the Maple going when all the trees around it had relinguished their life-sustaining leaves to the onset of winter. Even the tough old oak next to my parents' house, usually the last tree to lose its leaves, was naked.
Why was the Maple reacting so strongly to Dad's current health crisis? Maybe it was all a matter of timing. Perhaps this was it -- the Maple couldn't be sure my Dad would survive until spring -- this fall could be the tree's last chance to be with Dad.
Perhaps the Maple's own recent loss was one of the reasons. Earlier that year, another tree had been cut down by our new neighbors. That other tree was the only other one on Hickory Island that my Father could see out the den window from his wellworn reading chair. That other tree had been the Maple's primary companion -- their branches had intermingled -- did this tree's death steel the Maple's determination to show its appreciation to my Father with its current show of beauty?
Still stunned by the Maple's remarkable message I went inside my parents' house and looked out the window of my Father's den. I could see where the Maple's nearly-perfect round Profile had been alterred by the close proximity of the cut-down tree. Where the two trees' branches had met the Maple had not grown out as far. It was as if the Maple, in respect for its older, taller companion, had held back so the two trees could live together in their space. Now, in the year of the older tree's death, its impact on the Maple was at it's most visible. Each year now the Maple would grow into the space left empty by its companion's passlng. In a few years the memory of the other tree would be just that, only a memory, and the Maple would appear to have grown in solitude.
Just so my Father's impact on me was at its high-water mark. Soon he would be gone and I would continue to grow. Unlike the Maple, however, my Father's memory would continue to shape me.
Dad's spirit was thick in this place the Maple occupied.
The Maple's unique place in the world was directly between our home, 50 feet away to the West, and the river, 50 feet away to the East. Our branch of the Dumouchelle family had lived along the river for centuries, first establishing itself on what was then the French side of the river in the mid-18th century. My Dad's direct connection to that first establishment of the name was to sign off on the transfer of a tiny scrap of land in Windsor that was part of the original grant from the French King to the first Dumouchelle in the still -- New World. Dad's grandfather spoke French, but this connection was lost in this century, and Dad never learned his forefather's language.
I don't know if Dad felt this historical flow in his soul but a sense of history was another of Dad's gifts to me. This den I stood in was full of history books and books of military strategy that told of the great campaigns of Napolean, Stonewall Jackson and Marshall Zhukov. As the river flowed past in its endless quest for the sea my Dad had read of the great feats of these men. As a child I read those books and others of our European historical heritage. One day I felt I understood the reasons underlying Europe's national divisions and on that day I felt a special kind of excitement, the excitement of knowledge.
My Dad, the river, the Maple -- I was realizing my own identity.
The Maple grew between our home and "Slow, Endless Flow that Gathers the Waters of Michigan, Superior and Huron to Create Erie; Path of French Pathfinders; Border over which British Fought Americans and Blacks Escaped Slavery; Carrier of Ships for Industry and Restorer of Souls," the tree absorbed the spirit of the river. The river created an unobstructed horizon so the Maple could receive the gentle morning sunshine in its fullest. When storms created a rare East wind, the river left a clear path for the wind so it tore at the Maple with full force. The Maple never need fear drought, for the endless flow of the river would always provide water.
Looking Past the Maple's bright colors I saw the remnants of Dad's dock. The dock was destroyed in the high waters of the early1970's. The dock's ruins symbolized more than just that destruction. When we first moved to the house on Hickory Island in 1964, moving away from the west side of Detroit, we actually had a tiny beach between the river and a rotting, old, wooden breakwall. That beach disappeared when the waters rose, the same rise that destroyed the dock, and the beach has never reappeared in the twenty years since. We built a large, strong, metal breakwall against the waters to protect the land but in that protection we lost some of the intimacy of our connection with the rlver. I remember hearing the summer waves of the river wash up on that tiny beach all through my childhood years. I loved the gentle whisper of the river in the stillness of evening and early morning. Those waters were the background music of my dreams. The rise of the waters and our new breakwall destroyed the beach -- our little part of the river's voice was silenced.
When Dad's dock was whole I was proud of it. Our dock was the longest on Hickory Island. When we moved to the house the dock was in disrepair. The boards were connected to the metal rails and supporting steel beams by a simple wooden frame that the river could easily damage. In the greatest do-it-yourself home-repair project my Father ever undertook, he rebullt the wooden overlay to the dock. He bought dozens of boards, cut them to size, painted them a gleaming white, then bolted every slngle one of the boards to both sides of the dock's steel frame. I can see him now, on one knee, drilling through the metal, then putting his hand under the dock to screw on the nut. He had worked on metal in factories during the 1940's, he was not a great carpenter, plumber or electrician but he seemed comfortable with this job, cutting the boards, drilling the steel, fastening the two together.
When the high water came our dock held up well against the river's assault. The waves rolled toward the shore through the dock, pushing up on the wood and shooting small sheets of spray up between the boards. Wave after wave, storm after storm, and our dock stood intact while the nailed boards of our neighbors broke loose. Before long our dock was one of the few that was still useful. Eventually, though, the river had its way and the boards started to come loose. First just a hole in the pathway here or there but eventually all those boards bolted on by my Dad were stripped away by the river.
The waves of pain my Dad had endured recently were like the waves of the river -- he fought them as long as he could, probably longer than most would, but even he had to yield to the inevitable.
Even though the end was near, my Father's thrice-bypassed heart still beat on and on -- as if defying the death-inducing cancer with a steady chant of "I will not die. I will not die."
My Father had survived childhood asthma. He had lived with allergies that radically affected his life, and ours. We could have no mammalian pets (although I did have a pet mouse in the garage once). My Dad could not eat wheat and this simple allergy closed off an entire world of pastries and other simple pleasures. Yet he never complained. His physical abilities were crippled by a massive compound fracture to his right arm when he was in his late-teens, just becoming a man. The disaster left one arm shorter than the other -- meaning every significant coat he would ever wear had to be custom-tailored. I remember how awkward he looked when we played catch with a football in the back yard. As a small boy I only noticed the awkwardness, I didn't wonder how he felt about his inability to throw a football with one hand. Yet he never complained. His mangled arm reguired years of treatment to make it work even as well as it did. The medical science of the 1940's reguired him to wear a splint connected to his bones with metal rods. As he aged the onset of heart disease meant years of medication to treat the angina. Three bypass operations left massive scars on his chest and legs. Then the breast cancer came and a mastectomy soon afterwards.
Yet he soldiered on.
Never letting his health troubles overwhelm him.
Never abandoning his commitments to family and friends. He loved his children as best he could, having no example of paternal love to guide him. He did the things that he wished his own father had done. He worked long and hard at the company he co-founded thus providing financial support to his offspring. This work was his expression of love. He loved as best a man can whose memories of his own Father are full of anger and resentment, anger and resentment at the man who deserted him, his sister and their mother during the hard years of the Great Depression.
Then came the bone cancer and new treatments.
New despair and then new hope arrived like the pages of a calendar, one after the other.
Each health crisis led to new health regimens. He made the adjustments the treatments required -- he exercised more, he gave up alcohol. The discipline he acquired in a lifetime of living with health troubles served hlm well in this last battle.
Then he had to give up golf. He loved to play golf. It was still a young love, as well. He had never found time to play while working but when he retired he redirected his disciplined energies from work to golf. He played within the limits of his physical capabilities. His weakened right arm made his grip a constant problem, his swing was never full enough to generate alot of power but he hit the ball consistently straight. Golf meant companionship with his old friends and it replaced his job as his mission in life. He had an objective to play on as many courses as possible and in a few short years he played on hundreds.
In the last year of his life, Dad would not play a single game of golf. Losing golf seemed to be the one thing he could not overcome. He didn't actually complain, but in that last year he mentioned several times that he couldn't play anymore and in that admission I sensed he knew the loss of golf foreshadowed an imminent death. He knew he would never play again but when he died his golf clubs were still in the trunk of his car, ready for the next game.
The Maple's bright yellow signal marked the passing of a strong and loyal man.
Return to the Index of Synapse 37, Fall 1996