I am hardly the first to note that trees are at their loveliest when the leaves die. Correction: can be. My trees’ leaves turned a sickly yellow and emitted an odor reminiscent of cat urine. In a way, having a new frame of reference was for the best. Steve had died on an October morning, and even if I were somehow to forget the actual date, I will always associate it with walking home from the hospital under a bright blue sky, the air crisp, trees lining the streets in their full glory: autumn, unmistakably. When it came time to scatter his ashes, my five sisters joined me at a forest preserve where the trees were ablaze in gold and russet. I buried his ashes at the base of a redwood.
With winter, the trees finally began shedding leaves. Background became foreground; my view returned. One morning as the sun rose, I caught the Chrysler Building casting its shadow on the MetLife building, a slim dusky finger drawn across the striated facade, as if tickling it awake. I felt I must be the only person on the entire island of Manhattan seeing this.
The trees took weeks to shed completely. Their limbs were covered till Christmas with what looked like dried corsages from a hundred high school proms. Birds came. Whether or not they were actually migrating, I don’t know. I wanted to think so. They rested and preened, reminding me of myself finding refuge here.
That the trees were resilient no longer surprised me. Still, I marveled at how they took blows during the season’s first serious snowstorm. The wind boomed like kettledrum rolls, the snow fell hard—hard—piling on limbs till they threatened to break. How is it that snowflakes, tinier than tears, can carry such weight? By midnight, Manhattan was gone. In its place, a peaceful new world, camouflaged as a cloud. Ailanthus, I would call it.
My lease-renewal letter arrived that February. I found a bigger, cheaper apartment on the East Side and made plans to vacate. I had a good cry the night before leaving; I would miss this place. When I woke the next day, I found the trees outside my bedroom window not moving at all, as if frozen solid in the night, an eerie reminder of my last image of my partner. I pushed the thought away. I threw back the bedcovers and put my hands to my stomach. I want to be as still as that tree, I said to myself, and stayed there until the feeling took: limbs not moving. Trunk barely rising with each breath. Neither yielding nor resisting. Just being still. Just being.
NOTES FROM A JOURNAL
1-6-14:
It is my birthday: fifty-three. The day started with a gift. Oliver sang Happy Birthday to me, joy in his voice (and amazingly in tune), and hugged me in the wonderful way he does, nuzzling his head into my shoulder and melting into me as I scratched his back.
He had a handwritten card for me, and, as is his tradition, a new element, Element 53, iodine, in a small bottle. He opened it carefully. “Take a whiff of that and it will clear your senses.”
“In every meaning of the word, I hope,” I said.
_____________________
1-9-14:
O, while having a migraine, not bothered but fascinated by it, walking around the apartment: “I’m always surprised that the aura doesn’t illuminate the whole room.” (He once told me that the aura colors are as bright as flashing lights on a police car, which almost made me wish I could have one.) O looks at me, and smiles: “I’m sorry, but you are sort of covered in a Technicolor scotoma…”
_____________________
2-1-14:
Dropping by O’s at 4 P.M. to see if he wanted to go with me to the gym, and finding him curled up in bed, under the blue blanket, sweetly and peacefully sleeping. I waited several minutes, in case he might wake up. I cleared my throat a few times but he didn’t stir. He looked so tranquil; I felt a huge rush of love and—I don’t know why—sadness. I almost got choked up. I left him a note and went to the gym. Later, when I came out of my yoga class, I saw him on the second floor of the gym, and he looked so refreshed. He told me he’d slept for an hour. “Thank you for your sweet note,” O said.
ON FATHER’S DAY
When I went to visit my father in Seattle, he didn’t recognize me. He thought I was a fellow soldier in his division. I didn’t mind. I was glad to think we were at Fort Benning and not at the dementia care facility that’s been his home for the past few years.
“Lieutenant Hayes!” I said. “Nice to see you.”
“Nice to see you too.” He reached out his hand, and we shook. Dad, ninety years old, was slumped in a wheelchair.
This visit was very last-minute. He had been hospitalized with pneumonia and a small stroke. He was better now, my five sisters had told me, but changed; he slept all the time, a deep silent sleep, even though he is off all medications. Comfort care, they call this—a step before hospice.
I had just arrived from New York. It was six o’clock, after dinner. Staff had put residents into their pajamas and begun to get them ready for sleep. Sophie, a bright-eyed ninety-seven-year-old, wore a long silky nightgown with a high collar and long sleeves, as silvery white as her hair. She looked like an angel you’d put on top of a Christmas tree. Dad was in boxers and a T-shirt—he never did wear pajamas—and a robe he’s had for sixty years. It’s made from a blanket he’d had at West Point—class of 1949—and covered with military badges.