The Tree Grows Bigger

Yesterday I met the buyer and the seller of a little house I know. They’d never met before. This house, the one we’re talking about here, had been the first family’s home for many decades, both parents now gone, to heaven I’d bet, their town, no fault of these folks, now as terminal as any Stage 4 patient nearing their bitter quiet end.

The woman, the seller, kind, a daughter to their family told of her mom and dad. I’m not sure how the talk began, began to roll. But it did, it started, as it does, between people of good hearts, this buyer and this seller of this house in this place on this day I didn’t see coming. Her parents had owned and run a store, back when this place was a proper town.

Back when success could be seen out my office window.

The man, the buyer now, a boy in the story from way on back, remembered eating lunch, called Dinner in these parts, at her family’s store. Lunch there cost 35 cents. A drink was a dime. Her dad was a nice man, this then-boy recalled. Nice to the boy, this man recalled today.

I smiled as their memories met, circled, shook hands. Though these two people had never met, I meant. I mean.

I’m quite sure of that.

This woman had cared for her father near the end – he couldn’t be left alone. She remembered sitting at their kitchen table, looking out with him at the huge tree in their back yard.

I’ve seen that tree. See it now. Sun hits it from the far off western sky.

Her dad would look up at the tree. “That tree’s getting pretty big,” he’d tell her.

And it was. He knew.

And it was.

She loved her dad. Loves him still. But you knew that, already.

I had to hear the story.

They’d talk a little longer, the little girl now grown and her dad, about this and then about that. Five minutes or so later he’d say to her, as if for the first time, “That tree’s getting pretty big.”

And it was.

And it is.

Still, behind this house, getting bigger, like he said. Filling her memory and the thread of a life lived inside this hallowed place. Their home. The room where we three stood grew silent, listening to her words, one sip. 

Then another.

Her words.

Her life.

The woman’s parents took care of her, as parents do sometimes. Raised her. Gave her what she needed. Loved her. She smiled, her little girl eyes glistening brightly at their gift.

Today in this bittersweet time of finally selling the family home, she remembered.

I’d told her several weeks ago that this buyer was a good man, that he would take care of this house in a way that most in this town would not.

I believe that. Know that, really, as people know things without being taught.

He then told her the story of his mom. This buyer, this man, talking to this seller, this woman. It seemed the most natural thing. I think his mom passed away a year or so ago, but I’m not sure.

She too could not live alone, his mom, near the end, so he took care of her. He wouldn’t dream of putting his mother in a nursing home.

It strikes me hard this cold May morning, writing this down, telling you this, the phrase putting someone in a rest home. Like taking a dog to the vet to have them put down.

This man and his mom watched old John Wayne movies together, talked together, though at the end she couldn’t talk, his mom, except with her eyes. I bet they were beautiful, her eyes. Her son and his momma.

He remembered, this man telling his story, two regrets, which yesterday I heard – nothings, slips that his mom didn’t even hear. She’s in heaven now.

Write that down, I tell myself.

He loved her. Did the right thing for her. A hero, this man to me, certainly to his mom, may she rest in peace. The house, he the new owner, is lucky, again, good people, one family to another.

The tree alive, getting bigger.

The daughter, this woman, placing her family’s home into new hands. “Yesterday, I went over to the house,” she said. “So empty it was. So much harder than I thought it would be.”

So much harder than I thought it would be.

They shook hands at the end. She gave him a set of house keys, two garage door openers. “The openers need batteries, but should work just fine.”

I could tell you more, the stories they exchanged, two families forty years before, living inside a house inside a town whose heartbeat was steady, back then.

I thought about it later that night. My pen so unsure.

The words stopped. As they did. As they do.

As they always do.

The busy lives, the slowing as we age, then the end – the days, the years, the rambling adventures – the people we leave behind. That we are left behind by.

Remember the Alamo.

Thank God for His blessings, the majesty of folks doing what they do each day. May He forgive life’s mistakes, or at least let them come into a softer focus, be handed on as lessons, or dare we ask, disappear.

God’s word is there to see, ironically, if we but listen. 3.