I have a special tree that holds a special part of my heart as it blossoms in my back yard. I have often shared the story of that tree, but I figured I would share the story here tonight.

You see tonight -August 18- is a bittersweet date for me. If you read this blog from the beginning, you have read about my husband’s sister who died. This is the anniversary date of that…technically just after midnight on the 19th is the official date. But, 8 years ago tonight, I held the hand of my best friend and sister for the last time…wondering how the events of those last few weeks had even happened that left me in this place of saying a forever good-bye.

As I have shared before, 8 years and 1 month ago my life looked completely different than the woman writing this today.

8 years and 1 month ago I believed that change could happen even if you did not do anything to change….or that things did not necessarily need to change. I held tightly to what I did not want changed.

Holding tightly to her hand would not keep the inevitable from happening…so I began to let go that night. I kissed her hand and went home to await the call that would come telling us she was gone. She passed away with her parents on each side of her.

Dee became the sister I always wanted! Dan adored her and I quickly saw why when I met her for the first time over 20 years ago. She was pregnant with her first born son and was studying to become a nurse. She was strong and funny and knew what she wanted in life.

She came to love me after she let me fall in love with her first born….I was enamored with that child from the moment I met him! The bond between he and I led to me to being able to live with her and her precious little family for the few months that preceded my marriage to her brother.

That family closeness led to frequent family dinners, fun weekend nights, and the invite into the delivery room for her next two children’s births…

Her strength and sense of self silenced us when we began to question her behavior…

I will live with the choice of that silence for the rest of my days.

I had an opportunity to ask her if she recognized me while she was somewhat coherent in the hospital in those final days. I believe she nodded yes. I leaned in close and touched our foreheads together and asked her to assure me that she knew I loved her. She nodded ever so slightly.

On our final night together, we watched TV holding hands.

I wish it was something bigger or better than that. I wish I had said something profound. I wish so many things…but instead, she laid in the hospital bed incoherent and I sat in the recliner pushed close to the bed; her pale jaundiced swollen hand in mine all tan from a summer of camping.

Time stood still.

It feels still again tonight as I choose to remember this.

I have no memory of the drive home that night but I remember being in bed with my husband, her brother, when the call from his parents came. I stayed home with our young children while he left to go to her side.

We have never talked about that experience for him.

I went to the kitchen and remember sitting on the floor near my door wall to the back yard…it was done; but nothing was finished.

I was completely alone in my heartbreak that night. Dan was alone in his. His parents clung to each other.

I had said good bye but could not accept that this was how our story was going to end….with no resolution…with no repair…with no healing.

My beautiful, strong willed, red-haired, fair skinned, dancing partner, Prince loving, Pat B singing, fun time having, advice giving sister was gone…is gone.

My journey from then until now has been long and difficult while full of many blessings…but those blessings did not get revealed for quite some time and the pain was intense instead.

In January of 2010 I went to a GriefShare class that I had seen advertised at a Christmas Eve service…the encounter with Christ and the healing provided by Him when I chose to receive it occurred in those weeks of class.

Time stood still at her death, but life forever changed when hope entered my heart again because of Jesus Christ. There is no other explanation to it than that. I was changed and, 8 years later, am still a fervent believer in the healing comfort of Jesus.- this was not a Band-Aid on my wound or fad. I am a new creation in Christ.

In the class, we were encouraged to have forward thinking…what could we do to remember our loved one? what could we do to continue their legacy?

I struggled heavily with this….what could I do to show my love for her?

I desperately wanted to have something as alive as she had been…but a memorial garden seemed impersonal and other ideas fell flat. I really desired something she had touched…

In a dream one night an idea came to me.

She and her husband bought this little house with a cute little back yard. In that back yard they decided to landscape using the meager means budgeted for the task. That meant anything they purchased and planted would be small and would require years to grow or mature. That particular day was a blip of a memory and yet I suddenly recalled the Rose of Sharon that she had planted and remembered exactly where it was planted in the yard.

Now, I am no tree hugger. I have no green thumb. Yet, somehow, I remembered this tree. She picked it out, she bought it, she dug the hole for it to go into the ground, and she planted it. She watered it and waited for it to grow, hoping and believing that it would.

It was less than a foot off the ground when it went into her yard that day…we are talking a baby tree! But, I remembered it…and I knew I needed to have it. I needed what she had touched and cared for to be my own.

I told my husband, who was nowhere near the man he is today, about my need to have this tree…and he simply said “ok”.

Thank God this man does not think I am crazy! Or, at least, doesn’t mind me being crazy at times!

We put out two kids into the trailblazer and headed to her house that had long since been closed up in foreclosure. Frankly, we had no idea if it was being occupied by anybody on the rainy early afternoon we showed up…we had no clue what we would find and really did not care.

I needed that tree and I was beginning to think that God had told me to go get it.

It was the first time I had been to that house in a long time…it was empty and locked up with the back yard grass very overgrown. The swing set looked rusty and neglected, the sand box was overgrown with weeds. The patio area where we sat as couples dreaming of the future while her son ran around was no longer visible thanks to the  ground cover gone wild.

But there was the tree.

It had grown to be about 6 feet tall or so and was fairly narrow. Being April, the ground was soft with the spring thaw and Dan quickly went to work digging the tree out of the ground.

We left our sons locked in the trailblazer in the front yard…not wanting to try to explain what we were doing and why this house at this time.

As Dan dug, I wandered and cried at the visualization of my feelings…empty, desolate, abandoned, disarray, ill-repair, absent of life.

In my wandering, I went to the tree outside her bedroom window and remembered how she liked that particular tree…looking into it I saw the wind chime she enjoyed listening to hanging from a branch. I gently took that from the tree and have kept it like the treasure it was.

As I looked at the ground, watching my step, I saw two pieces of cement sitting by the house. Upon close inspection, I realized they were stepping stones she had made with her very hands of her children’s hand and foot prints- their names carved into the stone with multi colored pebbles scattered for artistic effect. I gathered those close to my chest and cried in disbelief of the gifts I was getting on this day.

We watched for the neighbors to come out and ask us what we were doing…no one came. We watched for the police to come to assess for trespassing or theft…no one came.

Dan filled in the hole very neatly and we carried the tree to our car.

My son’s have very intact memories of that tree being squeezed between their car seats as it was a little bigger than we thought once the roots were dug out!

Not one person in the neighborhood questioned what we were doing that day.

When we got home we put that 6 foot tree into a place in our back yard where I could see it from my kitchen and dining room. When I sit on my back deck, it is in full view.

I placed her stepping stones at the base of the tree and the wind chime hung on a low branch.

Then, we waited to see if it would survive the transplant. I was told that there was no way it could possibly live, that it was too traumatic to dig a tree up in the spring and relocate it.

Dee’s birthday is in August as is the anniversary of her death. That darn tree bloomed its first bloom that very first August- only a few months after the replanting!

It blooms every year while getting bigger and bigger!!

It grows. It is alive.

Against the odds, it survived and has evolved into something more beautiful than I ever imagined! I did not know what kind of tree it was when we dug it up that day, I did not know it needed full sun to grow, I did not know it would bloom in August…I just knew I needed it and I needed it to live.

It is still a metaphor for her…beautiful, surprising, strong…it has become a metaphor for me too…a survivor, perhaps beautiful in my transplant as well.

My heart aches in disbelief and wonder every August when I see that first bloom. I know what it means and still struggle to accept that this is our new reality…that I will never hear her laugh at life again…

I smile at that tree and feel Dee is smiling at me through it while God lovingly winks at me through each bloom.