Devin’s tree is dead.

It has been dying for 3 years now and it finally is too far gone to deny it.

The year it was planted it grew beautifully. The leaves were green, it bloomed on schedule, it even grew a few cherries. As summer progressed I noticed something wasn’t quite right with it. Leaves were browning, dying back. Branches were dying. I consulted garden store employees, online resources, I even had an arborist come out to look at it. I sprayed it for insects, I watered it, I fertilized it. By the time the arborist saw it the entire top half of the tree was dead. I howled in rage and grief. He declared the bottom branches okay and said it should be fine. I clung to that.

The next year I held my breath, wondering if winter had finished it off. With the spring leaves sprouted green, branches grew longer and thicker, and once again it bloomed. I exhaled with relief. Mid-summer I began seeing signs. I started checking the tree obsessively. One by one the remaining branches died off. But at the same time a side-shoot, split off from the trunk at ground level, grew to a man’s height and branched out. Den saw it as a new beginning.

This year, with the original tree entirely cut down, that new shoot grew into a new tree. It was the same size as the original tree and was healthy and tall. Den tried to point out the positives, to encourage and reassure me. I told him it wasn’t okay, told him it was going to die again. He thought I was being pessimistic and overreacting. I felt like we were just postponing dealing with it. I haven’t really looked at the tree all summer, even when Den would point out that it was looking good. I’d just shrug. I didn’t say it out loud, but the thought rung clear in my head, Just wait.

In the past few weeks it has really turned brown. I ignored it, hoping maybe it was just doing the fall thing. But today Den really took a close look at it and admitted the inevitable: the tree is dead.

I sat in silence, merely nodding, “I know.” I’ve known from the start. We were trying to nurse something that was irrevocably broken.

Anger rose in me, just as it did the prior two years when the tree died back. Anger, so much anger. I don’t even know what exactly it stems from. Den pointed out that the tree is not actually Devin. I know that. Of course I know that. But I put my faith, my trust, my heart into this tree. I will never see my son grow, never take another picture of him, never track his milestones. And all these things I have, they are important but they are also static. I have one good picture of him. I have Sheepie. I have every single thing I saved and scrapbooked. But the tree alone was a live, growing thing. It was something for me to look forward to, something to take photos of and scrapbook, something rooted and nurtured and real.

And that one real, live thing fucked died.

I feel like I have to grieve all over again. I grieved every little thing I had lost – so, so much, so many pieces of my life and my heart. Eventually I came to a place where I was okay. As long as you have those things to hold on to I was okay, I wouldn’t float away into nothingness. It’s scary sometimes how much those few things mean to me. To lose one of those few things, it’s another stab, another bit of my reality and existence that slipped through my hands.

I had threatened in the past that I would give the tree one last chance and if it died back again I was going to take a hacksaw to it. I have a very strong image in my head of not just cutting it down, but hacking it down with all the force my body can muster, chopping it into pieces and ripping it from the ground. I have very visceral feelings of anger that swirl around all thoughts of that tree. In a way I’m glad it’s finally dead, that we can get rid of it and I can start to let go. I admit that tree has caused more anguish than comfort these past two years. I should have gotten rid of it the first year when I lost my shit the first time, but Denis wasn’t ready to let go of it yet. I don’t know if I really will chop it up or if I will simply beg Den to get rid of it when I am not home, but either way it will be gone. That is a relief.

After that, however, I don’t know what comes next. Den simply wants to plant a new tree – if he had his way we’d just get a replacement of the same type. I do not know if I can handle that. Ideally, yes, I’d like the same type of tree, a chance to get it right this time. But then I just feel empty. It’s not the same tree. And planted 3 years later… that defeats the entire point to me. Twenty years from now I wanted to be able to stand in front of a huge, beautiful thing and say, “We planted this when Devin died.” It as supposed to be a timeline, a record. It doesn’t evoke the same feelings to have to say, “Well we planted a tree when Devin died, but it died too. This one was planted three years later and actually survived.” Will it just make me angry every time I look at it? Or will it forever just be “the replacement”? Not to mention the fear that we replace the tree and the new one dies, too.