Bradford Pear

When someone dies, and your world stops- but just your world, because the rest keeps spinning, it's not easy. Not that anyone said it would be.  All you really have left is the ability to honor the person you lost, and in my family that means telling stories. 

Lynn really liked to mow our 3.5 acre lawn.  None of us knew why, but why question a good thing?  So I made sure she put on sunscreen, and brought out ice water, and fed her when she was all done (this was hours later- talk about anal. She could put Mr. Lawn Fanatic next door to shame).  One day I planted a very small Bradford pear.  Ok, it was a stick, but it was going to be a Bradford pear.  I assured Lynn of this.  And for the next three years all I heard was, "Why do I have to mow around this stick?"

It's been 14 years and that stick is a good 20 feet high, filling with white flowers in the spring and berries for the birds in the fall.  The kids laugh at this story, and want to hear it over and over.  I'm happy to oblige.

Luckily, Lynn was around to see that stick she so carefully mowed around bloom.  And I was around to tease her about it.

Bradford pears are beautiful trees, but they don't last long. Their limbs fall, the trunk cracks, and eventually you have a once beautiful mess on your hands.  Still, I wouldn't trade the years of beauty for its eventual ruin, and I have to remind myself of that with Lynn.  She never had the opportunity to watch her carefully cut around stick finally succumb, but I know it's in my future.  Knowing doesn't make it any easier than not knowing, and this I have learned for sure.  I'm doing my best now to keep my own trunk from cracking; to keep my limbs intact; my flowers blooming.  And right now, it's the hardest thing I've ever done.