First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Illustration by Christine Wei
When I moved into my house, my life was unravelling. I was still sorting out the painful logistics of my separation. My father, my anchor, was dying. And oh yeah, the world was going dark under the shadow of a global pandemic.
I was raising three children while trying to hold onto a sense of structure, but most days I was just getting through. There was no road map. No certainty. Just a quiet panic of someone starting over.
One night, not long after we moved in, the kids were finally asleep and the silence inside felt impossibly loud. The kind of silence that settles after too much change, with boxes half-unpacked and grief lingering in the corners like dust bunnies. My father had died just days earlier, and the weight of it all was too much to carry. I stepped outside, needing to breathe, needing space. And there it was – the birch tree.
Massive, almost impossibly so, it dominated the small backyard as if it had no idea it was meant to have limits. It stretched upward and outward like it belonged in the woods.
First Person: Sometimes a little absurdity is just what you need when you’re grieving
It shouldn’t have grown so tall or so wide in such a confined space, and yet it did. That night I stood under it, my bare feet on the grass, searching for something solid. I tilted my head back to trace the branches. I exhaled. For the first time in months, maybe longer, I felt something close to calm.
As I lowered my head, I noticed a break in the bark that had taken the unmistakable shape of a heart. Friends, family and neighbours who stopped by to drop off welcome treats or visit in the backyard during lockdown all commented on the tree. “It’s something else,” they’d say, staring up. I took the heart as a sign – that maybe, just maybe, I was exactly where I needed to be. That maybe everything was going to be okay.
Over the next five years, that birch tree gave us shade during scorching summers. It stood stoic through storms and heavy snowfalls. The kids spent hours climbing its low branches, tying ropes, stringing fairy lights. We held birthday parties and quiet dinners under its canopy. It bore witness to laughter, exhaustion, frustration and healing. It was more than just a tree. It was part of our story.
There was a night when I was overwhelmed by the weight of a life I was navigating largely alone. A house, a mortgage and children who were struggling. That evening, I had opened a letter about a parking ticket I’d forgotten. It had now doubled in cost. It was a small thing but, in that moment, it felt like the final crack. The thing that might undo me.
I looked up at the birch. Its white bark shimmered in the moonlight, its branches gently swaying in the wind. It looked delicate, like it might snap. I felt the same. But it didn’t. And neither did I.
As the years passed, the birch finally began to show its age. Its limbs, once flexible and strong, had begun to weaken. During this past winter’s ice storm, I heard its top branches crack under the weight of the ice. In the morning, the damage was clear. Several limbs had broken off. Places of rot were exposed. It now threatened my garage and my neighbour’s home.
I walked around the trunk and saw that the heart shape I had once cherished had changed. It was split now, curling at the edges, the bark peeling away. It felt like the tree was telling me something: I have fulfilled my purpose. It’s time.
First Person: The shift from wife to caregiver was instant and soul crushing
The arborist came on a rainy Friday afternoon. I sat with my kids on the landing inside the house to watch, safe from falling branches. As the tree was taken down, branch by branch, we cried. There was something sacred in the slowness of it all – in the careful way the climbers moved through the canopy, gently lowering each section of the trunk to the ground. It was a dignified and respectful end. Exactly what the tree deserved after all it had given us.
When it was done, we walked over and counted the rings. Seventy-five. Planted in 1950, the same year our house was built. It had grown alongside the house, sheltered all its families, and watched over so many lives. And now, it had held us, too.
The resilience of humans – and children especially – is remarkable. When I think back to how we all were five years ago, still fragile and reeling from so much upheaval, I could never have imagined how happy, full and rooted we would eventually become. We didn’t just survive. We built something beautiful.
There’s a plan, maybe, to use what’s left of the trunk as the base for a treehouse. A small way to carry something forward. The rest of the wood will be split and stacked to heat our home next winter. Even in its absence, the tree continues to give.
Julianna Stonehouse lives in Peterborough, Ont.