The Sad Old Tree

Eliza was only fourteen at the time that her dad died, but when her dad died the wind was knocked out of her - right in her noggin, she was hit in the head. It was the day that her dad disappeared too, May fourteenth. It was a frightening time for Eliza - because her dad meant everything to her. She held their relationship dearly in her heart. She admired her dad. He was a professor, and she was just five when she found out her dad's profession and that's when she started to admire him and his work that he did and the heart, he displayed in his work. He worked hard every day - and when the time came that Eliza had to start high school, she knew that she would be good at it because she thought to herself often "My dad is a professor, there is no way I don't pass these classes"

She started geometry classes and she fell in love with the class, the shapes and the constant figuring out what degrees the angles were and what type of angles they were, whether they were obtuse or acute. Eliza was a nerd.

When Eliza was hit in the head at high school she was playing with the horses out back, this was an elite high school, a high school where only the true livin' life lovin' the suburbs-kids go And, she was all here for the school till she found that out. Eliza was leading a horse, trotting it, and influencing the mare to canter as well. When she suddenly got hit in the head with a disk that was flying in from the interstate that the high school was located at. This disk was a part of a car that was flying around 120 miles an hour towards her head, and this was the front part of the car too, so it hit her head pretty impactfully and she was unconscious till the girls from the horse farm ran outside to help Eliza. The Highschool girls found her laying down sprawled unconscious next to the very gracious mare that was named Snowball. The high school girls had a jug of water with them, but before Eliza was drenched in water, she had a very angelic experience. Her dad was there telling her, "This is my last call" and then what rang in her head after she got up from the help of the highschoolers was "last call"

But all Eliza knew from that, from the message that her dad Hank gave her was that this is the last time he can talk to Eliza, and the context behind her out of body experience told her that he is about to die, or that he is in dire need of help and is about to die.

Eliza was rolled chaotically to the hospital by a bunch of urgent care workers.
While Eliza was being replenished, as well as rejuvenated healthily in the hospital she was wondering what she could do in regard to finding her father and she knew that she had a place in mind to go looking. She and her dad had a special place they went to when they were sad about the day mom died - and how awful and sentimental that day will be to them forever. They went to the Sad Old Tree.

She thought that she should get to work and head to the best place that her dad always went to when he was sad or upset.

That is a place that she enjoyed too, she loved sitting underneath the tree that they would talk about. They would talk about how the leaves change colors so vividly, and that the tree looks like it's about to fall down but it is still striving through all their heavy winters in their hometown Grand Rapids Michigan. Despite the tree being so old, Eliza never thought that The Sad Old Tree would give up until she had seen it on this day.

So that's where she went, she drove there illegally as she was still just fourteen. She enjoyed driving though; her dad was just starting to teach her how to drive. Hank is a great teacher, and he has helped her relentlessly through her hard times learning the Spanish language as well as driving. Eliza arrived at the destination, it was a bumpy ride, but it was smoother than her usual driving times, which is ironic since her dad was not there to help her. It was the middle of January so, it was still a bit chilly, and the ground was ice frozen, but she had some comfy gear on as well as she was wearing these nice timbers that her dad had given her last august for her birthday. Last call Eliza thought to herself as she walked across the frozen ground - there were spots of mud puddles down by their favorite tree - which now looked like it was in a bad state. Then she saw something that was awe worthy, a frozen cold decaying deer with antlers that were just as big as the tree's limbs used to be. These antlers were not that big in perspective to what the tree used to be. So, they were just abnormally large antlers on a deer that didn't look as they were supposed to be on. She ended up getting a little closer to the situation and she discovered a sapling inside a hollow deer carcass, which displayed hope in her mind, hope that she would find her dad - either dead or alive.

The next morning, she got the same sight that she got when she was knocked unconscious, the visage of her dad appeared so imaginary and yet so real. Eliza thought of her dad again and he gave her the message of This is going to be my last call to you Eliza, I love you. She woke up from her slumber so frantically that she shot out of bed, put her timbers on and headed straight to the deer carcass underneath the leaf- color-changing tree that her and her dad Hank went to. She found her dad whimpering right next to the tree this time. Laid, slumpish across the base of the tree's roots. As his whimpers started to fade Eliza started to panic. He was quivering because the mere temperature was so cold, but not much to Eliza as it seemed her dad had been here for quite, awhile rather than Eliza being there for only two minutes. She started addressing her dad and the shape that he was in. 

Eliza was next to the now stump of the tree with huge apparent roots that were connecting to the sapling that sat growing in the deer carcass. But her dad had seemed so unconscious and now unresponsive she didn’t have much left she could do for her dear dad Hank. The place that they were located was next to a deserted gas station and town that not many travelers come to other than them. They were lost, together. Eliza laid right next to her dad, fetching her phone out of her pocket shakily and called the emergency services in hope that the last call to them would help her poor dad, Hank. Five minutes had passed since the last call she had made, and she was still laying right next to her dad. But she was looking around this time, listening and looking for sirens - waiting to see or hear for any signs of hope but the last call she made since being fourteen digressed into nothingness as the sirens never came, and the lights never showed.