The Tree

November 26, 2009

She eyes the gaping, empty hole before her feet.

This was it.

She kneels and reaches into it, taking a fistful of soft, fertile soil and allowing it to fall through her fingers. Her face is blank, her eyes far away. She is feeling reality, and reality is overcoming her feeling. Her heart is being drained until she is as desolate as the ground before her.

This had been her safe place. A tree, strong and constant had once stood here, roots stretched deeply into the ground below, branches extending out in every direction so that each time she approached she felt welcomed and embraced. When storms raged, she found shelter nestled against the trunk. When the heat of the day beat down upon her, the leaves provided shade.

She discovered a soft place in the tree and dug a hollow into it; she knew the pain it endured for her, and she felt a twinge of guilt at marring it. Yet a need greater than guilt and stronger than pain compelled her. When she had dug deeply enough, she began to give. There she whispered secrets and hid her treasures. And when her own heart broke, she bled into it, sharing her pain.

She had seen this coming. She knew the tree was worthy of more than being forever anchored to the ground. But knowing was no preparation for the loss she now felt. Her safe place, her shelter, no longer hers.

Tears are flowing freely now, her heart breaking again, bleeding into the hole before her, and creating a sickening, hopeless mixture. At last exhausted, she succumbs to her emptiness and collapses. Beneath the surface she is still alive, but to the world around her she is dead. She is in a place apart from time, without emotion, She is in a place alone, with no desire to try again.

The rain falls.

Drop by drop it begins to cleanse her. It feels fresh and alive. It beckons her to open her eyes. At length she concedes reluctantly, and is startled by what she sees.

A face, new and yet familiar, weeps over her.

He is the rain, the hope awakening her, feeling her pain before she means to reveal it. He holds out his hand. Slowly, painfully, she rises. He turns her face away from the emptiness of her past, the gaping absence of what was.

And deep within she feels something new and strange and beautiful filling her. Love is taking root. Hope has been planted.

And she is stronger.