The Pine Tree, the Squirrel, and Death
When I was eight years old, I realized that I was alive. Completely unaware of any looming revelation, I was sitting in the backseat of my family's long, blue station wagon that we nicknamed, “The Boat” because of its immense size. My parents joked that driving that huge station wagon was like maneuvering a cruise ship.
With the ceiling fabric sagging like the skin of an elderly woman and the cushioned blue seats, the inside of “The Boat” was reminiscent of my grandmother's lap, cozy, safe and warm. Throughout my childhood, I spent an incredible amount of time in the car as we took "drives" most weekends, visited relatives every summer, and moved over ten times before I was eighteen. Sitting in the car and looking out the window was where I imagined grand adventures of living alone in the woods along the highways, where I had profound epiphanies, and where I was surprised into stopping my 10 year habit of thumb sucking. That is a story for another day.
More often than not, people walk through their day never once contemplating the brevity of life. It is relegated to the back of the mind like an unwelcome, difficult, but unavoidable guest. His presence is terrifying, but we have no choice but to face him at some point. So, death stands in the shadows waiting to be acknowledged.
I have yet to feel his final handshake, but I was made aware of his presence at the age of eight. While waiting in the backseat of the silent car for my mom to come out of the house to run errands, I contentedly idled away my time by daydreaming. My mind was engrossed as I contemplated the strange pine trees in our yard. The trunks were the longest and skinniest I had ever seen on a tree in my eight years of experience, and way at the top, beyond the reach of three ladders, there was an odd puff of greenery. There was not a branch or nub to be seen for dozens of feet up the trunk until the lame poof of pine needles on sparse branches jutted out desperately. The pine trees in South Carolina always puzzled me. I thought them ridiculously ugly even years after we moved from that state.
As I pondered the pine tree, I watched a squirrel skitter around in our yard, then climb part way up the trunk. I had wondered whether the squirrels ever attempted the nosebleed climb to the uppermost protrusion of branches. It seemed a pointless and dangerous endeavor in my mind. The top was probably extremely windy, I thought, and with hardly any foliage to hang onto, the squirrel would likely be blown off to plunge the hundred feet to the ground. I would have suggested to the squirrel to try a different tree, but he didn't seem to like the idea of climbing much further either, turned, and scampered back down. I had my answer.
In the midst of my musings, I suddenly became aware of myself sitting there in the car, looking out the window, thinking these thoughts. It was as if I stepped out of my body and saw myself from outside of the car. The feeling was strange, profound, awkward and self-conscious, like watching the moment play out before me on a movie screen when I hadn't even realized I was being filmed.
I lingered on this sensation for a while and started thinking about the fact that I was alive. It had never dawned on me! I was alive like the tree and the squirrel, and like the tree and the squirrel, one day my life would end. I was living a unique existence and someday I would die. The thought rampaged through my mind, and I focused intensely on it, not wanting to forget this new idea. The moment passed when my mom came to the car and started it, but unbeknownst to my mother, her daughter in the backseat was forever changed.
The reality of life and death is an fleeting concept, grasped in moments of great joy you don't want to end, in the depth of grief over the loss of a lover or friend, in those heart stopping moments of terror when your life is threatened and everything you've known flashes before your eyes, or in mundane moments such as looking out the window of a car at a squirrel and a ridiculous pine tree.
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