Entry Six: Thursday March 24, 2015 6:30 pm

My seat of river rock feels… wrong. I am used to the solid and level chair of a severed limb beneath me, my back resting on the bough behind. Today, the rocks shift below, sending me sliding. When I finally stabilize myself on the rocks of the garden next to my tree, I find that a cold, softball-size one has wedged itself between the back pockets of my jeans. My spine strains against the forced rigidity of holding myself upright and unsupported.

“A new perspective,” I say to myself, and try to focus on the aspects of the tree now at eye-level: peeling strips of bark like ingrown fingernails, roots reaching into the rock garden and diving below into the earth, the robotic movements of an ant as it step-step-step-step-steps its way up the trunk.

Caw! Caw! A call sounds from directly above. The call sounds again. This time I notice the subtle growl within the caw, making it almost mechanical. I am reminded of a mechanized bird sounding the alarm in a dystopian universe. The source of the noise is a sleek black bird sitting in the branches of my tree. Sitting in my tree. My heart somersaults within my chest.

Can I get up inside the tree without disturbing him? I wonder. My numb posterior and I say a silent thank you for the bird and we rise. Knocking over a dozen river rocks and almost taking a tumble myself, I hoist my stiff body into its usual spot. Besides the addition of several white-gray splotches of excrement on the full bough in front of me, it feels like home.

I crane my neck, leaning against my back rest (for which my spine is also thankful), and examine the mocking-jay-like bird for just a moment before he takes flight. I’m shocked that I can see each feather in his wingspan and hear the fwuht fwuht of feathers in the wind. My eye follows this bird to discover that my entire yard has become an aviary: gray-tailed birds with dark wings; auburn-breasted, white-torsoed ones with charcoal tails; black smooth-feathered birds with heads so dark they shimmer blue in the light; a red cardinal, showy and bold, muting the colors of everything around him.

The silence that I’ve come to associate with nature has been replaced by a deafening cacophony. One bird sounds like a swing set that needs oil: skree-ee, skree-ee. Another explodes in a burst of hysterical laughter: ha ha ha ha ha. One more resembles something like a breathy, lisping dove: twoot, twoot.

This new side of my yard buzzing with life catches me off-guard. I thought I would welcome the green grasses and warmer air, but the truth is, I don’t know how to handle it. After a winter of isolated and quiet reflection, spring feels imposing and invasive. My tree is host to a bird reunion and their chatter – probably shocked over the reduction of three boughs – scrambles my brain and keeps it from forming one beautiful, lyrical, or even cohesive thought.

This is the “after” part of life after death, I realize. After someone dies, we wonder how can anyone possibly go on now. How can the world keep turning and bills keep coming and games be played and hikes be made and laughs be had? Those are the questions that we all have after. What I learned from the birds is that it just does. Life goes on around you and it’s dizzying. But there is no other choice. The snow thaws; the birds return. And a marred tree or not, they keep going.

Entry Five: Wednesday March 4, 2015 5:45 pm

Upon experiencing snow for the first time, a blind acquaintance dubbed this foreign phenomenon “silent rain.” As I sit in my tree and listen to the audible ksh, ksh, ksh of crystallized ice colliding with the vinyl of my coat, I can’t help but disagree. I’m struck by how loud that sound is in the otherwise silence surrounding me. The flakes pelt my face with their initial sting, surprising because of their size. A single flake lands on my lip and I focus on the feathery cold as the snow dissolves from the tips of the flake inward. I breathe in and out as the flakes build up and up and up upon me – except they don’t at all because they melt as quickly as they land. Still I wonder what would happen if I drifted off to sleep right here. Would someone find me tomorrow buried beneath the blanket, sitting in a tree?

I open my eyes. The snow clings to the gaps in the bark. It makes the scales of bark stand out, highlighting where they curl up and away from the tree. I lean forward and exhale hot breath onto a patch of snow. I watch as the white fades to translucent, the substance pixelating as it sweats into water, dripping down the tree. The tree cries. The sky cries. I cry.

I feel four graves today. Two are familiar: Kole and my tree. Two are new – doubling my pain in a matter of hours.

The first of these new graves I can see from my tree. At the base of the hill, behind the shed maybe twenty yards away, the white snow is trampled in a circle by dirty, brown boot marks. You cannot tell it now, but the hole was dug by a newly purchased lifetime-warranteed shovel. It is somewhere between one and two feet deep. On top, lies cinder blocks slowly being covered in snow; within the hole lies our sweet Annie. Her disease was unmanageable. Her suffering: intolerable. Putting her down: unthinkable. But it had to be done.

The other grave I cannot see; it has not even been dug yet. It will house my cousin taken from this earth after a four year battle with osteosarcoma. Osteosarcoma is a cancer in the bones. It most commonly affects children and young adults, and it has one of the lowest survival rates for pediatric cancer. Frequently the cancer spreads from where it is initially found (for my cousin, the leg) to the lungs.  Despite limb-saving surgery, chemo, trials, fundraising, research, praying, praying, praying: another grave for another young boy.

I look back to my notebook to find that the melting snow has soaked through the page and blurred the ink into a sopping mess. The melt begins to seep through my pants and chills my legs as well. I crouch down further into the arms of the tree. I hug my knees and say to myself, “Just when I thought this was getting easier.”