i am waiting for the bough to break — or, to be severed by proxy at my behest.
earlier this week on my daily walk-about, i noticed that a primary limb, the major artery, on a nearly 80’ tall and likely nearing 100 years-old, elm tree on the land i occupy, had cleaved and that the fracture was migrating down into the trunk — and dangerously so.
i don’t know the cause: if it was the abrupt shift in temperature to freezing here in southwest Michigan — or, if the tree was stressed from a standing-water-wet spring followed by a very dry summer, or if “it” is simply at the end of their life — all the elms here had unusually held onto an abundance of their prolific leaves until the fourth week of November.
no matter.
the matters:
the massive limb of the elm stretches high and precariously over the old barn, and depending on the wind direction, there’s a chance if it falls, it could clip the back of my house or take the whole tree down with it.
i await the tree surgery & removal crew. i am at their and the northerly and westerly gusts’ mercy.
in the meantime, i have also been wrestling with the possible choice of whether to have the crew amputate just the cleaved limbs — if the tree is in fact salvageable — or, to remove the entire tree at once instead of forestalling the inevitable.
i read a passage a while back suggesting that humans communicate with the trees or plants that they “manage”, to tell them beforehand what is happening, to ask and allow them to withdraw their energy, their spirit — before pruning branches or cutting flowers, or harvesting; but what would one to say to a tree being before performing a “euthanasia” of purely human choice, purely human convenience, purely human-imposed necessity — because if the tree were in a forest, on a savanna, on a dune, along a river bank, it would simply die, shed its branches and slowly crumble, or crash tremendously all at once, but naturally, with or without, any human ears hear it — to eventually become host to fungi and habitat for ground dwellers.
this tree has immense importance as habitat — nursery, food cache, shelter, perch, and shade for so many other Earthlings — then, there’s its effortless ability to dapple light into lovely patterns with the Sun and Moon, winter and summer, — its majestic beauty against the blue, cloudy or midnight sky; its history here, its only and forever home — its life and lifespan longer than my own; it is such a striking specimen — undeniable since the first time i set foot or eyes on this place — two of its lowest branches parallel the ground like a live oak, extending their reach almost sweeping the ground when their leaves are rain-soaked — its absence will be felt here, for as long i hold memory.
i only recently began to truly comprehend how devastating it was for my maternal grandmother to lose two of her limbs, her legs, amputated below the knee because of complications of Type 1 diabetes; my grandmother died at 59, when i was just 21 years old — in the March preceding the May i was to graduate from university — the first person in my family to attend college.
of course, i sort of understood that her life had become much more difficult — even with a support system and a few accommodations to her home and car: her early 80s international harvester scout was retro-fitted with the throttle and brake on the steering column: and, my future husband built her a makeshift push cart and hinged, foldable, plywood ramp to enter and navigate her mother’s — my great grandmother’s small, stucco workers cottage when she relocated in her final two years of life from Hot Springs, Arkansas back to Chicago.
my grandmother lived with enduring “real” physical pain and also phantom limb pain —the neurological memory of both the longtime physicality of, and the excruciating pain she experienced in her legs — which kept her navigating and balancing presence and engagement with the haze of opioids for pain management in the end —
the gap between her doses often becoming a runaway train of pain as she tried to forestall the high and subsequent sleepiness of her meds to participate in life.
but in the busy-ness and selfishness of young adulthood, i never really fully contemplated what it meant for her to lose parts of herself (or for that matter, for anyone to lose parts of their body to illness or injury) — i quickly and simply accepted it as an unfortunate fact of her life;
i am so sorry that i didn’t empathize more with what she was experiencing; that i didn’t ask her about it, that i wasn’t more attentive.
i wonder how my grandmother prepared herself for the semi-planned loss of her legs?
these are some of my thoughts as i plan to preserve some of the severed branches and limbs from the elm for the woodpile for the fire ring.
to live and die whole. to keep all parts of myself, somewhere. including my body.
have mercy.
because since last autumn, there has been undeniable and overwhelming visual evidence of the devastating injuries of the Palestinian People in Gaza — truly only avoidable if one wanted to look away from or deny the genocide — photographs, videos and livestreams from the People themselves as both victim and witnesses to real time horror — limbs blown off, destroyed — by Israeli air strikes and bullets, by the heavy machinery crushing living bodies and plowing into homes still full of families — thousands of brutal amputations without anesthesia or analgesics — “Gaza now has the highest per-capita rate of child amputees in the world.”
there is no denying, ignoring, not contemplating what amputation is, what it means for the amputee, the survivor, their families, their communities, anymore.
have mercy.
in southwest Michigan, we were expecting lake effect snow with sustained winds up to 40 mph beginning early evening on Wednesday — some of the gusts actually ended up exceeding 60 mph north/westerly;
to complicate matters, over the previous week, i had begun feeding a feral black cat who was preying around the bird feeders and also hunting moles and voles in the meadow — but without much success; then, as the weather turned bitter and brutal over the last weekend, i left the overhead door slightly raised for her entry — she immediately darted in for shelter in the barn as soon as i was out of sight; so, i began feeding and housing her in the barn. she is slight, green-eyed and suspicious of me (or maybe, of all humans), and i have not been able to pet her, let alone, handle her
and,
— to further complicate matters, when she finally let me look upon her for a bit as she lapped her cream and devoured sardines,
i saw that she might be pregnant.
i don’t know how to lure her out of the barn or to capture her as i await the tree falling, or felling — the county animal care and control folks will not come out — they say that if i capture her, i should drive her to the facility myself: but, if i do, will they choose to euthanize her, to destroy her?
cat rescuers and rescues are at capacity, and they have encouraged me to keep doing what i am doing, come what may — feeding, pregnancy, birth, kittens, potential barn collapse, my inexperience and all.
have mercy.
and simultaneously in meantime, in spite of the danger of entering the barn during high winds and/or blizzard conditions — or at all, while a giant cracked limb hangs over the roof,
i have been trying to take photos of and also remove some items out of the barn; this barn is equal parts workshop, auto shop, tractor parking, family museum and art gallery, seasonal hunting grounds for snakes, and catch-all storage — a necessity with an early 1900s farmhouse with little closet space.
it’s all, a lot —
— even when you notice the bough is about break; even when you have the luxury of preparing for it to break.
some have suggested that if the tree falls before the removal crew arrives, that it might be nice to have a brand new barn.
but, all that loss, all that waste, all that mess?
then all those new building materials harvested, hewn and transported? all that labor?
then, replacing all the stuff that can be replaced, that would be necessary, to replace.
all that work? all that time? all that money?
all the stuff that i can’t solely or safely remove and temporarily relocate that is absolutely irreplaceable: childhood dioramas, vintage original toy collections for (albeit) unlikely, future grandchildren.
i once saw myself introducing a little human being to the film Jurassic Park — waiting for their awe after the film ends, and then saying: “did you like it?! wasn’t that awesome? well, guess what? come to the barn with me!” — pulling down the tub of their dad’s dinosaur toys and Jurassic Park compound playset and giving it to them, playing with them on the lawn for hours.
then doing it again with Toy Story, The Lion King, and Harry Potter.
No, for me, preservation and conservation is what i aim for. for what my aim is worth.
i try to remind myself that i cannot control the weather, the wind, the tree, the cat, the tree removal crew’s schedule — yet, i haven’t really slept well since i discovered the massive fracture in the tree — i’ve been sleeping with one ear open waiting for the crack and boom and the subsequent debris field — wondering if the cat will survive, or if she will be able to escape under the door, or if i will be able to find her and help her in the chaos of a collapsed barn, during a dark, wintry, country night.
have mercy.
long, good life,
12.8.2024
it has been a personally challenging year — a challenging 16 months — to be precise.
it has been a devastating, acute 14 months for Gaza, a horror beyond 21st century comparison.
i remind myself what the people in Gaza, Sudan, Lebanon, Congo have both chronically and acutely experienced — what they’ve witnessed and what they have suffered and what was stolen from them, violently taken from them, not lost — to be precise:
family, friends, homes, and the social, economic and physical architecture and infrastructure that supports human lives and communities.
what they have preserved and conserved in spite of, for the love of — it all — for all these hard, brutal decades.
for Gaza, all of it gone in a string of one excruciating instant after another, adding up to 14 months —and counting.
their boughs and bodies and roofs breaking,
their eyes, their ears, their limbs, gone.
their beloved children and future grandchildren, gone.
their beloved, ancient olive trees, gone.
all, irreplaceable in a human lifetime.
have mercy.
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 