by Jason Telese

That one there’s my boy, yeah. He’s twenty-nine—all grown up now. Not too long ago, though, he was just a sapling, you know? It doesn’t seem like that long ago, but goodness, twenty-nine years is a really, really long time, huh?

I remember that day we planted him so vividly. It was this really brisk April morning and John kept having to grab his hat or the wind would have just whisked it right away. The older trees were starting to wake back up, but weren’t quite there, just barely green. They watched us so closely, I could feel it. We had his spot all cleared out and ready, and John’s hand was shaking so bad he could barely hold the spade as he dug out Elijah’s little, tiny hole. It was so cute! I laid his roots down nice and soft, and John patted down the topsoil with his palms. We sat there next to him for a little while until we couldn’t stand the wind any longer—it felt like wind was grinding us down to a fine, fine powder. We gushed our goodbyes and hastened home for the day. Eli looked at us so sadly as we left, but he knew we’d be back.

And of course, he was right. Every day, that spring and summer, at least one of us was there. We had to be—young ones need nourishment. We would sing to him and read him stories and he would sway so happily in the breeze. His baby leaves—they rustled so easily then. Now? I mean look at him! It takes a gale force wind to shake those humongo-boughs.

But his baby leaves, oh! They were so small. We have his first trimmings in one of the baby books somewhere. We took them that August, just before his first color change. You should’ve seen his surprise! We had to explain that it happens every year to every tree, and that they would come right back in a few months—totally normal stuff. I don’t think he believed us, but, well you know—mothers always know best. Sure, I’m no tree, but I know the leaves come back, and they come back stronger and more vibrant than before. I had to keep reminding myself that during Eli’s first winter. God, it was so hard to see him out there, like a cold little skeleton, just waiting for a bit of sun to warm his bones back to life. We stopped by every week to shovel around him, and tried our best to not to wake him, but he might as well have not been there.

I cried so much. It felt like we’d lost him, but you just have to remember it’s in their nature. All children go through phases, but especially when your kid is a tree. Of course, like I had told him, and like I should’ve remembered myself, he woke back up when the spring sun decided to show face again. Seeing his buds return after the winter, even to this day, is one of the most fulfilling, amazing feelings in the whole world. That first hug is like magic. It’s barely warm out, and his bark is still damp from melted snow, and yeah, there’re lichens brushing against your cheek, but it doesn’t matter. To hold your baby again is… You know.

Something about the soil here—it’s different. The young ones shoot up like magic beanstalks. I think it’s enchanted. For instance, see that big oak over there? He’s only sixty-eight! And the size of him? Such a sweetie, but you’d never know it by looking at him. Just a big galoot of tree, and at that age! Anywhere else, a tree that size is a hundred plus, if not hundreds of years old. I’m telling you, there’s something special about this place. You made a real good choice planting here, doll.

I still come every day, if I can, even after all these years. Not all the parents do, you know. I’ve seen them come and go. I find that after about ten years, they’ve usually gotten what they needed from this place, and they try to move on. Some come back, but a lot leave for good, and it tears the kids to bits. They slouch against the sun and dry up, and then you’ve got these poor, grieving trees, leafless in June as if it’s January, waiting for their parents to come back and sit in their shade one last time. It just breaks my heart. So yeah, I still come and visit Eli every day, but he’s a grown man now. I know that he’d be fine if I didn’t visit every day, but the everyday visits are more for me than him.

This—everything… It all sounded so crazy to me at first. We held the service at our synagogue, and this older woman, who…oh lord, she was probably my age now, she came up to me while I was sitting in one of the back pews, just staring straight through the walls into space. I didn’t know her. But she sits down next to me and tells me about her son and how cancer took him away at five. As bad as it sounds, I—god, I was annoyed at her! I was just so empty, and it had happened so recently, and then some yenta from the congregation makes my son’s funeral about her own kid? I listened anyways. She told me about this place—here—and how it gave her this sense of purpose and allowed her to sit with and hug her boy again. She told me her name was Ruth and handed me a small shred of paper with her number scribbled on it. She looked quietly at me for just a moment before kissing my forehead and standing up to leave, but before she did, and I’ll never forget it, she told me, “They only die if you let them.”

So, I took her advice. We called her up, purchased a plot here, and a week after the burial, John and I were out in the wind planting a tree on top of our son’s grave. We were so lost and just threw ourselves at this place, hoping it might fix the nightmare we were living in. It felt wrong at first, no matter how hard we tried not to let it. Calling a little twig our Eli felt as if… I don’t know, in a weird way, it was as if we were taking his name in vain. But with each passing moment we spent with him, we realized it was him. And we got back what was taken from us: the chance to see Eli grow.

I—uh, I’m so sorry, by the way. About your daughter. Here I am going on and on and you’ve sat there, cute as can be, and just listened. Thank you for that. You know, ever since John passed, I don’t talk to many people that aren’t trees, and, well, tragic as the circumstances may be, I’m always happy to see parents here trying. Not trying to bring their kids back, no, but trying to keep their memory alive.

Life is so beautiful. There were times that I couldn’t imagine feeling this way, but I mean it, I do. Life really is beautiful. …It goes on, even when the world tries so hard to stop it. Life grows, even in the cold of winter when the leaves fall off and it looks nothing short of dead. Where lightning strikes, and termites nest, and weeds cluster; where two dumb kids take a pocketknife and carve their initials into its side: life keeps going. Sometimes it seems as if it’s gone, you know, like when the cars in the road out front don’t slow down and then, in an instant, all the sound in the world gets sucked away like it’s in a vacuum, and when you’re holding him in the ambulance and your throat is torn to shreds from screaming so hard but not ever letting the sound out. And of course, when you’re sat in the very back of his funeral wondering how you can ever live another day of your life without him. Even then, life continues. It grows from the ground and explodes those leaves into the sky like fireworks, and… Well, almost thirty years later, sitting in this playground of a cemetery, life persists, because they only die if you let them.

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Jason Telese (he/him) is a writer and MFA candidate in Creative Writing at The University of Alabama. His stories often explore varying portraits of masculinity, addiction, and existential discomfort. His work can be found under large rocks or sometimes—if you don’t floss daily—between your teeth, causing serious decay.