Far from the Tree

“I never thought of Dad as a ‘tree guy,’” Paul said. 

Paul’s eyes were bleary. They’d left before he had time to make coffee, and his chin rested on his hands perched atop the shovel handle he was leaning on. Puffs of misty breath wafted from his nose and lips in the early morning air.

“Yeah, me neither,” agreed his sister, Elise. “But Dad always was full...of...surprises.” She timed the last few words to her breathing as she knelt to scoop out handfuls of dark soil from the bottom of the shallow circular hole Paul had just dug.

A gust of wind ruffled Paul’s t-shirt, damp with sweat from the short but intense effort of digging in the hard-packed grass. He shivered. It was chilly, unusual for Southern California, even in October, and Paul struggled to remember the last time he’d been awake early enough to see his breath.

“Is that deep enough?” Paul asked, gesturing to the hole with his chin.

Elise pushed herself back to sit on her heels and slapped her dirt-covered gloved hands against her thighs. It had rained last night, another rarity for So Cal, and her jeans were caked in mud from the damp ground. Her elbows stuck out in that childish pose that made her look decades younger than the fortieth birthday she’d be celebrating in January. 

She didn’t seem to mind — either the mud or the impending milestone.

“Yeah, that should do it,” she said. “You don’t need a really deep hole to plant a magnolia tree, apparently. And before you whip out your phone, relax. I already Googled it,” she added with a smile to take the sting out of her words.

Paul frowned and slipped his phone back into his front pocket.

Elise twisted behind her to grab the thin trunk of the 18-inch tall magnolia sapling they’d bought at a local nursery yesterday. The funeral home gift shop only sold flowers in pre-arranged bouquets, often paired with seasonal decorations.

Paul looked around at the floral arrangements in vases near a few of the other headstones. Sun-faded American flags and a few Jack-O’-Lanterns on sticks were tucked between baby’s breath and wilted carnations so that the dead people would know what time of year it was.

Paul wondered again why we use the same word — “nursery” — for the places where we keep baby plants and baby people. But watching Elise lift the tiny sapling that would someday grow into a tree that weighs as much as a blue whale, he understood what gardeners and farmers had known for millennia. 

All life is fragile at the beginning.

And at the end.

Most kids think their dad is the strongest man in the world as he whips them up onto his shoulders. But for Paul and Elise that had actually been true.

Their dad had grown up competing in weightlifting and bodybuilding competitions. The kind of contests where the competitors wore leotards and the winners got to take home “gold” trophies the size of acoustic guitars.

Most nights you could find him working out in the little gym he’d built in the garage; Paul, and eventually Elise, helping him load the bar with weights and watching in awe as it bent when he picked it up.

But Paul also remembered how his father had looked in the hospital bed during those final weeks. He had tubes running into his nose and jabbed into the mottled parchment paper skin of his shriveled bony hands as the beeping monitors reminded everyone that there was no trophy at the end of this.

“Congestive heart failure” the doctors had explained and they’d all nodded. His heart was working too hard. That was why his skin was yellow, and why his ankles were filled with fluid.

Working too hard. Heart too big for his own good. The strangers in white coats knew him better than they realized.

Elise held the sapling over the shallow hole and twisted it free from the flimsy black plastic pot. Clumps of soil fell from the snarled network of pencil-thin roots that had grown into a perfect cylinder of brown clay held together with woven white lines. Elise murmured apologies to the tiny tree as she brushed at the delicate roots, coaxing it into something less suited for a geometry lesson.

She placed it into the foot-deep hole, rotating the tree back and forth until she was convinced it was “facing the right way.” Paul grunted his approval each time.

“Help me cover it up,” she said as she began pushing handfuls of moist soil into the hole, her fingers massaging and spreading the dirt evenly over the exposed roots. Paul scattered heaped spadefuls where she pointed until the only thing visible was the thin, pale trunk.

And just like that, they’d planted a tree.

It felt like it should have taken longer.

Elise stood up and walked over to stand beside Paul. She took off her gloves, tucking them into a back pocket, and slipped her arm into his. Her head rested on his arm just below his shoulder. They stared at the tiny tree planted ten feet behind their father’s headstone near the back edge of the cemetery grounds. 

“Do you remember how Dad always liked to take walks through the cemetery?” she asked after a moment.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I always thought it was weird.”

“Me, too,” she agreed. “...until he told me why he liked this place so much.”

Paul looked down at her, his eyebrows raised.

“It was the day before Thanksgiving...three years ago,” she said. “You couldn’t make it that year because you were spending it with Steph and her folks. Sorry about that, by the way,” she said with a pat on the shoulder.

Paul grunted and shrugged away his divorce. It was getting easier to do that.

“Anyway...I was giving Dad a hard time about not becoming the local cemetery creep when he finally told me why he liked to walk around here.” She paused, staring straight ahead at the headstone in front of them. “It was the headstones. He loved reading the headstones,” she said. 

“The headstones? Really?” Paul asked. “...why?”

“Dad said they were ‘impressive,’” Elise answered. “That’s the word he used. He said it was ‘impressive’ the way each headstone tried to sum up an entire human life in just a few feet of marble and granite. He was amazed that everyone tried so hard to make a ‘good last impression.’”

Paul looked at the words on his father’s headstone in front of them. It had been installed the day before yesterday. They’d gotten a call from the cemetery that they could come and inspect it. It was why they were here this morning. Well, that and the tree.

“Loving husband, proud father and grandfather, devoted doctor, and honored to be an active member of his community.”

The words seemed so simple and predictable; even cliché. They could describe dozens of other men buried nearby. Even the font they’d chosen blended in with the sea of grey stones.

Then Paul’s eyes drifted past the headstone to the tree they’d just finished planting. It was swaying in the breeze, the frail leaves fluttering. Paul squinted. It was definitely leaning to the left a little, but he didn’t want to say anything for fear that Elise would make him dig it back up. 

That little tree had certainly been a surprise. But despite their confusion, his father’s will had been explicit:

“I want my children to plant a magnolia sapling near my grave. No need to water it or worry about maintenance. Just plant it and let it grow. That’s the best that anyone can ask for. If we’re both lucky, the tree will grow and provide some shade for others to rest in. If not, at least my kids will remember the day they got their hands dirty trying to do something different."

The right to plant a tree in the cemetery had been almost as expensive as the two plots they’d bought, the other one reserved for their mom. But Dad had been insistent. And he’d been right.

It was definitely “something different.”

“Why do you think he chose a magnolia tree?” Elise asked, and Paul started a little at the way their minds still ran in parallel sometimes.

“He liked the smell,” Paul replied after a moment.

"What?" she asked.

“Mom and Dad came to visit me at school during my freshman year, right around my birthday in March. I remember because Dad took one of those comically big whiffs of fresh air he used to do while I was showing them around. Then he embarrassed the heck out of me by spinning around like The Sound of Music and yelling about how much he loved the ‘smell of magnolias in the springtime.’”

“He liked the smell,” Elise repeated. “Seems like as good a reason as any to plant a tree. Very ‘Dad’ of him. 

“Yup,” Paul said with a small smile. “Knowing Dad, he probably just wanted it to smell nice when Mom visits.”

“An air freshener would have been easier,” Elise joked.

Paul grunted a laugh. Elise shifted her weight. 

“Do you think this little guy will make it?” she asked, gesturing to the sapling with her chin.

“Probably,” he answered. “Magnolia trees don’t need a lot of help to grow, at least in this climate. Good time of year to plant it, too. I Googled it," he nudged her. "It just needs a little rain, some sunshine, and a little luck.”

“Guess so,” she murmured. “Do you...” Elise began. “Do you really think anyone will sit under this tree someday like he said?” she asked.

A car door closing nearby echoed across the lawn, breaking the silence.

“C’mon,” Paul said. “Let’s get back. Mom still needs help going through the garage, and we’re meeting with the bank this afternoon.”

Elise nodded. She looked down at her jeans, only now realizing how filthy they were.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve got a blanket in the back. You can sit on that,” Paul said as he steered her by the shoulder to the car.

The car alarm chirped. Paul loaded the shovel and his sister’s gloves into the back, grabbing the blanket for her to use. He slammed the door closed and looked back across the lawn through the forest of stunted gray headstones with their matching metallic epitaphs and wilted flowers.

The little tree behind his father’s grave looked a little bigger already.