Memories

This should not bother me.  It's just a tree.  I'm supposed to get over these things, right?

Twenty years ago this Saturday my family planted this beautiful flowering pear tree in our yard in honor of my Aunt Linda who died just two months earlier from ovarian cancer.  I know I've talked about her before, but as a kid, I was very close to my aunt who was just like a big kid herself.  She passed away when I was 12-years-old, and...let's just say I didn't handle it well.  Up until the very end I thought she'd be just fine.  It wasn't until one week before her death when my mom sat me down and told me she would not survive that I fell apart.  I don't remember being at her funeral or only just a little bit...I blacked out.  I blacked out when we saw her in the hospital that last time, and I blacked out at her wake and funeral.  I don't remember much of it if at all.   I made her a Valentine's Card, and I was to put it in her casket.  I couldn't.  I couldn't say good bye and I couldn't put it in there so my Dad (his sister) did.  I didn't handle it well at all.  Months afterwards I told my parents I didn't want to live and journaled about how I hated my life.  Granted, I was a teen but still....it wasn't until I had a dream of her that I got back to normal.  I dreamed she was in her mother's house where she lived until her death, with long reddish hair (which I later discovered was the way her hair was when she was younger which I had no idea) and she told me that God sends certain people in your life to be there for certain reasons.  And I woke.  And I was fine.   I should say this was my second dream of her.  The night she passed away, just around 11:30, I went to bed at my grandparent's house and I had a dream she was in the hospital bed and said good bye.  So when I woke I knew she was gone.   Yeah, I'm like Patricia Arquette in Medium.  I have some pretty vivid dreams of loved ones. Our neighbors paid for this tree, and it meant a lot to all of us.  My oldest nephew when he was five or so pointed at the tree and told us it was Aunt Linda's and that "he would have liked to know her."  I wish you did too, kid.  And I wish she knew my child.  She would have loved playing with Aubrey.   Okay, so where does this tree come in?  Well, my parents told me this weekend that apparently the trunk has split into two.  It's at risk of falling into their house and their neighbor's house so they have to take it down.  That made me tear up.  What the hell?  Twenty years.  Twenty years, and I should be fine.  I should not be crying over some tree, right? But I still miss her and her laugh.   And I'm going to miss that tree.  As silly as that sounds.