We're All Lookin for a Happy Ending

The first anniversary of my sister’s death I was given a tree. “Oh great”, I thought. This wasn’t a joyful, thank-filled ‘great’; this was a sarcastic irritated ‘great’. How was I to take care of anything else when just taking care of me was a grief-full of mess and disaster? More so, where in the heck was I going to plant this thing? We have an enormously beautiful Red Oak in the front yard whose branches swim over our St. Augustine holding a covering of lush green, then red, then a light golden brown and finally frosted arms of bare before the new growth buds again. Three Crape Myrtles in our back yard. Again, where was this Crape Myrtle to go? 

 The deeper questions that cut behind this minor problem surfaced, “How was this tree, this tiny twig of a branch to bring any fringe of comfort with the ever spanning gap I carry? How could this Myrtle meet me in my chains of imprisoned questions, “What if I had gone looking for her, gone to her apartment, like I considered doing, and knocked on her door, stopping the trigger from being pulled?” 

My tree sat in its pot for six months and I barely touched her. 

Natures coarse took it to wilt, and I could bare the sadness no more. So it was placed in our side garden along the driveway, a perfect fit actually, and I began to water her.  Bits of awakening wondered through her and she started to stand up, hold her posture a tad more proudly. Brittle branches looked happier. The pigment of her skin deepened. 
In my grief journey I too was standing a bit taller, exercising health into my bones and skin, socially gathering the way my tree gathered the day and night into her marrow. The more she smiled at me, the more I smiled right back. Baby leaves sprouted with chlorophyll and I found myself taking pictures, sending them to family, and my Aunt Klare, the giver of this, now special, tree. Tender as I was, my tree was tender toward me.

My sister, if bound by the ticking of a clock, were here she would be twenty seven today. My “Hailey” tree bore her first fruits of bloom this week and she is bright and she is pink and she is breathtaking. It is a glimmer of heaven (life) on earth. When her earthly life stopped her happy ending was just beginning. 

Pat Green starts his song piercing us to the core, “We’re all lookin for a happy ending” Hailey has one now,  I will have one too. Chrits reminded me of this incredible truth through a silly little, wonderfully amazing, tree.