tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why).
I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter on little reserve.  I thoroughly relate.  As I look out my kitchen window each day at the red-bud that did not bloom, I do so with a nostalgia for the many unborn hopes and winter exposures of my heart that simply will not bear fruit.  Then, while weeding yesterday evening, clad in ballet flats, black leggings, an empire waisted dress and a fine gauge sweater, I decided to do something.
I picked up my shovel and began to dig and dig and dig.  When digging wasn't enough, I brought out the pick ax and set to work.  I can't even remember the last time I swung a pick ax, but it felt good.  Indescribably good.  Minutes passed.  Hours passed.  It became my raison d'etre.  I didn't hack at it.  My sons' placenta had merged with that soil and this dead tree.  If a pick ax can be wielded in reverence then that is how I wielded it (albeit a sloppy, somewhat deadly reverence).  I felt that I needed to get to the bottom of that tree.  I felt that if I could uproot it, somehow I could start afresh, allow the dead to be dead and choose the living.  In the end, three sweaty, grueling hours later, as the sun was setting, Shane stepped out and finished the last torque that uprooted the tree.  He only tilted the ax once and it was free.  I felt like crying then.  Crying for losses, inadequacies, imperfections and pain. An ocean of tears wanted escape.  I didn't.  I stared at the tree.  I stared at the hole.  I stared at the man whose help I had needed but didn't want.  I stared.  Then I put up my tools and went inside.
Someday there will be an apple, or a cherry, or a peach tree outside my kitchen window.  For now, there is a hole.