You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone

My neighbors recently had the huge tree that grew in their front yard cut down. This was as shocking as it was devastating to me. Like the day I got home from work to find the city had cut down all the trees lining the street in order to prep for a construction project. All. The. Trees. Gutted I was.

But my neighbors' tree? Losing it was like losing a limb. (I apologize to anyone who has lost a limb for the inaccurate and totally insensitive use of this simile.) Because it may as well have been my tree. In my yard. Covering my house. Because it did. It covered my house as well as theirs. In the days after the Awful Thing, I felt lost in my own driveway. The sun beat down directly on the house because there was nothing to shade it. I felt so exposed, and totally without bearings.

I guess all I meant to say today is that it's now fall, and there should be leaves for me to rake. The leaves I've raked for years. When I asked the neighbor why he had done this Awful Thing, he tried to cheer me up by saying I would no longer have to rake the leaves. Consolation, my ass. I loved those leaves. And I loved raking those leaves. It was cathartic and manual and somehow gratifying to see the mounds of leaves eventually end up in a big pile at the end of the yard. To me, that was fall. And I miss it.