Today, they cut down my Granddaddy's trees.

I used to think that the phrase, "Life goes on," was meant as a comforting lie that life would one day be as good as it was before the negative event that warranted said phrase (either that, or "suck it up.")  I now realize that it doesn't have a hidden meaning at all.   It means that life goes on whether you want it to or not.  It doesn't promise that life will ever be the same, and it shouldn't, because it won't.  Life is a series of moments, some good, some bad, in an ever waving sea of change.  Constant change.  Even during a pattern of good moments or bad ones all grouped into a stretch of time, change is happening.

It's easy to look back on a summer, which mom and I remember to be particularly joyous, and sometimes, we wish that we were in that place again.  But, if I inspect it a bit more closely, at the time, we were in the midst of a colossal change.  That was an in between moment, and I'm willing to bet that if we were thrown back into that summer, we'd both be scared shitless.

The other afternoon at the grocery store, mom mentioned that she missed the time in her life when she used to run into her dad there.  She obviously found those moments comforting and wanted to return to such a happy time.  But, upon further thought, I realized that those moments happened during the times in her life when she was struggling with the loss of a child, an unhappy marriage, being a single mom, finding a new love, and having a baby who didn't sleep until she was four.  And this is probably why she found the chance encounters worth storing away.  They meant something to her.  They meant a moment of peace.  Or maybe support.

As soon as we moved into our "new" house when I was eight, Dad set to chopping down all the trees one by one.  They were big and messy and were all in danger of blowing over during a good windstorm.   When I was eighteen, dad planted a new tree in the front yard-- a little potted Bradford Pear that dad had purchased for use in our Senior year production of "Alabama Rain."  Eventually, we found a better prop to use, and the young tree was shoved into the darkness of back stage.  But, that little tree fought and fought, and it bloomed despite the lack of water or light.  And so, it earned its place in our yard.  Likewise, when I was twenty-two and dad saw fit to finally dig a pool (three years after I moved out), Uncle Bobby brought mom a Weeping Willow and planted it nearby.  It was her dream to float around and stare at a graceful Willow tree whilst sipping on an icy Margarita, and so it was. 

Those are our special trees, now, but as a child, our special trees were the ones planted in Mimi and Granddaddy's front yard.  My mother was a child when they were planted, and they were very tall by the time I came along.  Mom tells a story of when hundreds of blackbirds took up residence in those trees.  My grandfather didn't like the idea of me playing in an area used as a blackbird potty, and he set to removing the birds by example.  A good, honest Christian man, Granddaddy called the city to alert them of the situation and to warn them that he was about to use a firearm within city limits.  They sent an officer out to observe as he fired a few shots into the trees, permanently grounding a few of the vermin while the others scattered.  The fallen comrades were then hoisted on ropes into the trees as a warning to future visitors, and the problem was solved.

Today, I drove by that house to find stumps where those trees once stood, and it hit me right in the feels.  As soon as I saw my mother, I ripped off the bandaid of news, and we both drove over to stare at the house, wood shavings coating most everything in sight.  Of course, we know how monstrous the trees had become, and with tornado season approaching, it made perfect sense that the current owners of the house would have had the giants chopped down, just as we had done with the trees at our own house.  Because those trees were just trees to us.  They were big and messy and kept the grass from growing.  They were liabilities and hassles.  They were nothing to us.  Now, I wonder if they may have been something to someone else. 

But, life goes on.  New trees may be planted someday-- trees special to the new family.  And sometime after that, those trees will be cut down or blown over or sucked out of the earth by a twister.  And guess what?  Life will go on.  Life is never stagnant.  It may be boring.  It may seem hopeless at times.  But, it never stands still.  The world keeps moving around us.  People die, and new ones are born.  People get married, divorced, get jobs, retire, make plans, and change them.  No two days are alike.  Heck, no two hours are alike.  As someone who has become somewhat terrified of change, I find that fact kind of funny.  Essentially, it doesn't matter whether I choose to have things change.  They're going to change anyway.  My invisible sand timer was flipped the day I was pulled out of Mom, and it's constantly running, just like everyone else's.  There is only one guarantee in life:  it will go on...until the sand runs out.