Ode To a Water Oak
Death is strange. Grief is Stranger
I’m a pretty sensitive guy when it comes to the life on Earth. When I learned of Jainist Hindus practice of carrying a small broom to brush off surfaces before they sat so as not to hurt anything that may have been living there, I found the idea quite appealing. If I’d been sitting on something other than plastic chairs at the time, I may have even adopted a small boom.
Life is everywhere. I have very little ability to protect it. I still try.
That’s probably half the reason we have eleven dogs here. Several live inside, but most hang outside with me a few at a time. Before we’d built a fence to keep our pack more manageable, we relied on training. Sadly, everyone here is neurodivergent as hell, so diligence in training remains rather difficult.
Still, the pups are fairly well behaved and the ones that aren’t go back inside for a time out.
A year and a half ago, Teddy and the neighbor’s dog (an adorable, pitch-black shepherd of some kind that I called “Nix”) were both pups. The neighbor’s dog[1] would frequently come play with ours.
I had several dogs out while doing some yard work – Teddy, Copper, and Nix. It was a pleasant afternoon, one of my favorite ways to spend Texas spring. I looked up from the pile of logs and limbs I was working on, noting the interest of all three dogs on something across the yard.
I walked over, calling their names in a vain attempt to wrangle their focus. The last thing I needed today was a dog with a snakebite. As I walked up, I shooed the pups away. They danced back a couple steps, attention darting between me and whatever was on the ground.
I knelt, finding an infant squirrel the size of a walnut, breathing, but frail. Too young to open its eyes.
The pups kept lunging toward it and away, like it was a toy.
My brain burst alight. “No!”
I began to shout; they thought I’d joined the game. I tried to get their attention: lunging and retreating from them, fingers to the ribs, throwing a stick. Switching to sweet tones, I tried to coax them with bribes of food.
Nothing could compare to a living toy.
“Please!” I cried. I can still hear that scream in my memories. I can feel the way it slipped from my throat like the hand of someone hanging off a cliff. Calloused, sweaty, desperate.
Futile.
Pathetic.
I ran down the driveway toward home. Tears streaked my eyes. There was only one thing to do.
My frenzy caught the attention of the others sitting on the porch. I didn’t want attention. No one could help. They could only witness.
“What is it?” Adam asked.
“It’s nothing.” I hid my tears by jogging harder.
I grabbed the dish blade and ran back to where the dogs were. Adam followed.
“It’s nothing!” I repeated over my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it!”
“Is it a snake? Are the dogs OK?” He continued close behind.
“They’re fine, everything’s fine!” I wanted to rip my heart out. To embarrassed me like this was a cruel thing to do. I could hide so many things but not anger or despair, not when it was from my own hand.
I reached the dogs, successfully pushing them back with my speed.
I brought down the dish blade on the breathing walnut. I watched until it stopped moving. There was barely any blood.
Adam walked up behind.
I just lowered my head and turned back down the driveway.
Seeing death became easier after that day. What remains is the feeling of that plea on my throat.
A few months later, we had more death to deal.
A massive water oak grew next to our house. It was easily eighty feet tall and too thick for two people to ring with their arms. It’d been here since Adam’s family bought the home. Large limbs falling onto the roof were a regular, heart pounding occurrence. It was a widow maker, a deathtrap, so we finally took it down.
It was quite the spectacle. A man rose in a sling attached to a crane arm. His loose shirt flapped in the wind above the tree as he directed the crane driver where to place him. Six men took two days to bring down the tree, churn it into ground cover, and grind the stump as best they could. The tree was abutted to the house, so a large shard remained.
Over the next couple months, new shoots grew from the stump. Trauma response. We can all relate to that.
That was a little over a year ago.
I was cleaning up the yard by the stump yesterday. Dozens of shoots filled the area, rising from the thick roots that spread like subway tunnels. I walked to one set of shoots and bent down to pull it up. I repeated the process. Cleaning off the stump was like peeling back the fingers of someone clinging to a rope. It was disturbingly easy.
It wouldn’t survive even if I’d let them continue to grow. Even if it could, it can’t grow here without endangering us.
Death is strange. Grief is stranger.
I laid the limbs on the compost pile. It felt like some kind of sky burial, where a body is taken by nature one piece at a time. I kind of like that. Things have to end.
Part of me wishes it had hurt a little more, like the squirrel.
From the Rift,
[1] For some reason he’d named this gorgeous, fierce looking dog “Sweet Pea.” I refused to accept that and called her Nix instead.
Thanks for Reading
If seeing me vulnerable is your thing, boy oh boy do I have a doozy for you: What I Learned By Staring at a Dog Dick for Five Hours
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