Member-only story
Death of an Oak Tree
The tree watched over me as I grew up. Then suddenly, it was gone.
It was a senseless murder.
The tree — our tree — had been majestic. It was a white oak, the largest in town, and could have lived 300 years had it not been chopped down in its prime.
When we heard the news, I begged my parents to buy our old house back. I was thirteen and should have known better. Still, I thought maybe there was some way this could be undone.
Our old house was the first house my parents ever owned, the house where we had lived since I was four and my sister was two and my brother was about to be born. According to our elderly neighbors, the original owners had planted the tree outside the bathroom window, for privacy, more than 50 years before. The house was on a double lot, or, more accurately, the house was on one long rectangular lot and the tree reigned over the other, occupying nearly as much space as the house itself. My parents never could get grass to grow in its massive shade. I’ve always assumed that was why the new people got rid of it. Or it could have been the acorns. We used to get a quarter for every paper grocery bag we filled up halfway.
For our part, we had eventually accepted the grassless portion of the yard as the price of living with the tree. It was so big…
