The Road Tree

Lucy and her father and were going somewhere on a familiar road. Maybe it was the hardware store or maybe it was Rodman's Drugstore. In hindsight, Lucy could not, for the life of her, remember where they were headed, or why they were going there.

Looking back on their conversation that day, Lucy sometimes wondered if she'd been a different person in an alternate universe.

So much had changed since then.

It just seemed like another ordinary smart alecky back and forth between father and thirty-three year old daughter, but later on it would take on such meaning in her life that she could hardly believe it seemed so ordinary and insignificant at the time.

"Look at those trees would you?" her father exclaimed excitedly.

It seemed to Lucy that her dad was really strangely happy when he could point out things that she had no interest in. He took a lot of pleasure in it for some bizarre Irish reason.

As usual, she took the bait.

"Geez, dad! They're just road trees. They all look the same to me, " she replied, obviously irritated.

So annoyed was she, that Lucy rudely turned up the music on the radio as they drove along, hoping it would discourage him from describing all the scenery.

Her father was not deterred.

It only seemed to egg him on with his fascinating subject. Over the years, the more she would protest, the more he would pursue. No matter what the subject, he was always prepared to beat it into submission, trying to force her to see something that she stubbornly refused to see.

"Look at that shape, kiddo! They pruned that one to a fare-thee-well."

"Dad, it's a tree okay. Get over it, would ya? They all look the same to me, " she reiterated hotly.

This was all the more annoying because Lucy's dad was in the habit of clipping and trimming his own trees until they looked like the feeble remnants of a nuclear catastrophe. She wouldn't go there and say that he'd ruined his own trees, but everyone in the family knew it for a fact. She didn't want to hurt his feelings, so she kept that nastiness to herself.

It was then that her dad abruptly changed the subject in a way that seemed very annoying at the time.

"You know, you drive close to Parklawn on your way over every time you come to see us."

Lucy looked at him and sighed, grateful that they were at last off the subject of the amazingly pruned tree.

"Parklawn? You mean the cemetery? What about it? Have you lost your mind? Why would I want to go in there? EWWWW!!!!!"

"Mom and I are going to be buried there and I just thought you'd like to go check it out."

Lucy hated the idea of death, funerals and anything to do with cemeteries and always had. What's more, her father knew it.

He hated the subject almost as much as she did and they never talked about it.

Now her dad was suggesting that in her spare time Lucy should cruise through a cemetery that had a long tree-lined entrance, set way back into a deep wooded parkland. It didn't make sense to her that he should even think about it and it was turning into a conversation that made Lucy very uncomfortable.

She decided to turn the tables on her father.

"Dad, why don't you go check it out?"

As usual he was ready with an answer.

"It's bad luck, punkinhead. I want you to go look around and tell me about it. Tell me about the trees and how it looks."

Lucy shook her head adamantly, not at the time making the connection to his frothing admiration for the tree along the road.

"No way. I am not going into a cemetery and look around. It gives me the creeps and besides you aren't going anywhere any time soon and neither is mom."

"You never know," her dad replied. "I wish you would reconsider."

For some reason this made Lucy very nervous. The other thing that scared her was he wasn't kidding anymore. He wasn't insisting she do it, but she could tell that it was something he wanted her to do. Usually, she would comply, but not this time. She was so caught up in her own anxiety that she continued to resist.

"I am not doing that and you aren't going to die. I couldn't cope with that and it isn't going to happen."

Her father's tone was different when he answered, "We're all going to move on from this life sometime, you know, kiddo."

"No, you are not because I couldn't live without you and mom!"

Now it was her father's turn to be adamant.

"That's not right. Life is for the living and you must carry on. It's the natural order of things. You have your own husband and family now."

She changed the subject in annoyance because her father was dealing with one of her greatest fears. She was relieved, at the time, that he finally let it go.

Lucy never did "check out" or preview the cemetery setting as her father requested.

She didn't have to.

Her healthy, robust father died suddenly and was buried there within six months of their conversation.

Lucy spent many hours searching for the tree along the road that she refused to look at that summer's day.

In the end, she realized that her father could see what she could not.

You see, his grave lies right in the shade of the most beautifully pruned tree that ever was.