Stay Connected

You were never good at being in the same place where your limbs stood. Always with your mind wandering and your soul too adventurous to stay strapped to your body. Wishing on every shooting star and realizing the stars never listened. They came and gone, just as almost every person who crossed your path did. A vicious cycle. A world too cruel to understand how truly special you are. A world that would rather replace the stars with pixels and replace you with polluted air. The people walk around this city in a rush to go nowhere. Bumping into you as if they could not recognize your existence. You acknowledge them, you must, but they do not offer you and your tall presence the same courtesy. They find when the breeze picks up you whistle as if your worries were in second place. No constant vehicle issues, no time-consuming repetitive job, no doctor’s appointments that you cannot afford, no obligations to anyone but yourself. A dream most have, but one that cannot be obtained as the struggle is the only way for them to live here in this city of broken dreams. Maybe it would suit you well to think of their disrespect as more jealousy than complete disregard. It could help ease your mind when the nights seem long. 

You have grown here, back when times were not so tough. Back when kites flew high and eyes expressed hopefulness. Looking up at the clouds and thinking if you bounced on them as if on a trampoline, and then you fell off, you would just land on another cloud. Now with rapidly declining mental health in a great deal of individuals, they sit at home burning for something to get hooked on and tending to their minds by watching screens all day. Unlike how you used to think -your thoughts similar to young children of the world- these days if someone were to imagine jumping on a cloud they would follow it up with panic of the inevitable falling through those atmospheric ice crystals, through them fast with gravity’s assistance, one by one until there were none left except for the hard concrete waiting impatiently for them below. 

You did have a friend though. Well, plural at one point. A husband and a wife that frequented where you stayed. They would come and the smile would never go away. They would sit on the bare grass with no need to separate themselves with a blanket. They found comfort and you are partially responsible. You would overhear their conversations and wonder how two people could fit together perfectly as if made for each other. They would bring a book every time. The husband would read to the wife while she laid her head softly in his lap, grasping every word and every feeling of what he recited. You did so as well. It was as close to seeing the world as you could get. She would squint to where her eyelids would be covering and only allowing her golden-brown irises to peak through slightly. You could tell that she just wanted to gaze at him no matter if the sun found its way gleaming through the branches in her direction. You looked forward to these weekly visits. One day they just stopped showing up, very suddenly. They left you pondering over a story that had not finished being told. You were waiting for the next reading session so you could find some closure. It had not come. 

Then, one day roughly five years ago (months after you saw them last) the woman came to you. She was all alone, which she had never done previously. Her eyes had changed and she seemed like the rest of those who just pass by… dead inside. She pulled a book out of her roomy purse. It was titled “The Glass Castle” and was written by Jeannette Walls. She began to read, and as she emphasized even the little details, it traveled right through you. If you could cry, then you would have that day. She stumbled on her words here and there. She had to clear her throat with every mention of family. You thought she had come to connect again with you, but you later realized she was reading to stay connected with him. You did not understand that her husband was absent due to him passing away. Not until you saw two teenagers throwing around a football near you and realized when they mentioned that “sad old lady who just lost her husband and has nothing left to live for” they were talking about her. 

She would not attend church on Sunday mornings. You knew her faith laid with him. She made it a point every Sunday to come sit beside you to read these stories. Most of them you have already heard as they were reread many times. However, you never felt bored. There was comfort in familiarity. Tears would trickle down her face occasionally, which made you believe these stories were extra important to her and were most likely her late husband’s favorites. You understood that this time was sacred to her and that her true religion – a religion for her soul – was based on the devotion to him. 

There was not really a decline. No more than usual. She seemed to be in good health for her age. The hardest part was that you were not prepared for the quick drop. She came to visit one more time. She could not even wait for her normal Sunday routine as it was only Wednesday. This time she spoke directly to you. Coughing intensely between words, she carried great gratitude for your constant presence. If only you could speak in anything but the whistles in the breeze. The ones that found their way ruffling your leaves and allowing old ones to cascade downwards and new ones to sprout proudly. You wanted to hold her and express how much these Sundays meant to you. Unfortunately, you had no way to communicate in terms she could comprehend. She understood you could not, and she took the step to embrace you. She wrapped her arms around the bark on your trunk and slowly lowered herself to the ground still holding on. Somehow you felt it, did you not? Was that sap or tears? You were no longer just an object, no longer considered just another expendable part of nature. All those years you had hoped to grow feet, previewing everyone else living through motion while your roots were always anchored, only mapping the dirt. You had feelings and more than anything, you had a great deal of empathy. 

She turned her body to where she no longer held you with two arms and instead looked up at you with her eyes while resting at the base of your trunk. They changed again.  The sense of gloom that you saw through her eyes after her husband’s passing had faded. They were that golden-brown that glimmered. She squinted to protect them from the sun like she had done back when she would settle in her husband’s lap. Her breath left heavy, but her soul was as light as a single page from one of those stories, as light as a leaf that fell from a branch of yours and landed on her hand that laid motionless on her chest. You wondered if sometime during the last gasp she saw her husband once more. Her face expressed something you had never seen before. It was a sense of overwhelming peace that brought an odd response in you. It began a roller coaster of self-realization. You found comparisons between your kind and hers. Trees and humans are not too different. You both breathe, you both feel, you both shed the old to bring the new, you both have scars from your past but dreams for the future, more than anything… you both are mortal, and well, that is a scary thought that can keep you spiraling if you let it. 

A few hours had gone by of her laying right beside you; yet no one had approached. Not until a child roughly five years of age ran over and away from her mother. As she poked at the woman, she asked concerningly, “Miss, are you okay? Can you talk? Can you see? Can you hear me? Do you feel this?” She continued her poking. She followed her questions that brought no response with a plea to her mother, “Mommy, help! Help! HELP! This lady is not doing anything! She is still and quiet!” Shortly after the mother checked for a pulse and called the police, they had arrived on scene. There did not seem to be much investigating, nothing like what was read from those stories. The authorities found the circumstances not suspicious and were mostly concerned about identifying her and calling her next of kin. You uneasily overheard that other than her late husband who had been gone for five years now, she had no family, no friends. But you were her friend, were you not? No one expressed any sorrow for your loss, did they? Apparently, the woman who had visited you for many years was actually a great contributor to the upkeep of this park. She was the heart of it. Now that she has been reunited with her husband, you are left alone to grieve silently, even though what surrounds you is chaos and noise. 

A few weeks later, a group of individuals approached where you stand. They discussed your fate and gave you an expiration date. They took away your right to a natural end. They stabbed stakes in the dirt, some that hit close to your roots. Around these stakes they wrapped non-adhesive plastic film that warned people passing by to stay away. You no longer got the chance to hear another story and the crisp sound of a page turning. They began chopping pieces of you off, and you felt it all. The woman opened you to a new world, and they showed you just how selfish it is.  They also began the removal process of other trees that were in the same vicinity as you to make more room for an updated and extended playground. The young girl and her mother came to watch the workers demolish you, but undeniably they were not in support of it. The girl reached her hand out in an attempt to console you before you were fully gone. You could hear her tender voice as she apologized. You knew she should not have to apologize at such an early age for something that her species had been doing wrong for centuries. When you heard whole chunks of yourself hit the ground, making a thump, you understood that they chopped away at everything that made you special. It was everything that made you special to the lovely couple and the caring mother and daughter, and even to yourself. You were only allowed your memories, and soon that would be taken away as well. They used parts of you to make a memorial wooden bench in honor of the woman who kept you truly alive. They agreed upon its location being exactly where you had stood. All too ironic.