The Encased Observer

They say children should outlive their parents. While I regret that my father is the one that had to carve into the wood of one of the many colossal thick trees found in our town’s Woodland Memorial, a small part is glad I don’t have to help hollow out a space for him or my mother. 

Sorry, brother. 

This massive grove is our final resting place. In this way, the Earth embraces us forever. A forest of birth, death and rebirth. 

As a child I watched others carve out the bark for their dearly departed. Watched Grief in all its forms, but at a distance. As a child you think you’re invincible, that bad things will never touch you. Soon enough we learn we were wrong about that.

I wondered how I would bare watching my loved ones settle into the wooden husk. Walking this life without them. Was there a proper way to grieve? 

Well, now I don’t have to wonder, I just have to wait for them to meet me. 

Instead, I wonder how they will do it. How everyone else has been doing it all this time. There is selfishness in this gladness, I hope they can forgive me for it. 

I have never feared Death, even now when I am well within its grasp. Still it's curious, to be aware of the heavy sap that is working to encase what’s left of my physical self. Nature's own milky embalming fluid. I imagine the texture of dense honey. I can almost taste that sweetness again. 

The encasement takes three days. Family and friends watch as the sap overflows, seeps down the trunk to settle at its base, speaking out loud their love and memories, so it may be encased with us.

I am aware but I do not feel. Not the way I used to. What little I do, is fading away from me and into the bark of my wooden tomb. New branches will grow, leaves, and there I will feel the slight tingle of wind as it dances around the cycle of life from Spring to Winter and back again. I feel what the tree feels, is what I mean. Small animals that climb frantically to find shelter during storms or away from hunters, man and beast. The weathered hand of my mother when she visits me, caressing the raised tissue of the bark, its breathing pores. I can feel the tree breathe in her scent. The hardened back of my father as he sits with my daughter and reads to her. The tree does what it can to soften itself and cushion his aging skin.

I wonder what I look like now. Still me? Just asleep, as the fluid cascades over my body and cures into a semi translucent golden white window. I try to remember the shapes of the others that have been buried in the grove, barely visible once things have settled. The sap providing enough glow that when the sun shines at golden hour just right, we would be able to see them. A soft statue.

I’ll never know the feeling of time’s wear on me. There are pros and cons to that.

. . .

So many days have passed now, years. I suppose that time is of no consequence to me any longer is a pro. It has felt like no time at all really. Especially when my family still makes time to visit. My eyes are closed so I do not see, though I suspect if they were open I wouldn’t be able to see anyway. I can hear and the years have helped me discern their footsteps on the grass as they walk through the Grove. Along with the others’ family and friends, their laughter and tears.

Today, my mother visits.

“There are still moments I forget, where I wake up and forget my own age. I am twenty three again and you’re in my belly. Or I wake up and I’m in my thirties, baking you cookies. I made some today. That still moment, before awareness takes over… It is a blessing.”

I can smell the warm chocolate in the air, as the tree inhales ever so slightly.

. . .

My father’s footsteps are still solid, confident. A walk I never got the chance to perfect.

Today, he visits and as always only lays his hand gently on the trunk I rest within. He stands this way for minutes or an hour at a time before leaving.

He never says a word, but he doesn’t have to.

. . .

I often mistake my brother for our father, I am learning his steps are quicker though. Usually, he tells me about the latest achievement of my nephew. How he’s worried about being able to take care of the twins that are on the way. Or the way his wife has gotten close to mimicking mama’s stew. Sometimes he tells me in great detail the fishing trips we would have taken every weekend together, or family dinner watching our children sit in the same seats we did at their age. Us, sitting in the seats our parents did when they watched us. I never saw my brother cry when I was alive, but I know the sound of it now.

. . .

The biggest con follows as such. My daughter is older, her voice doesn’t match the memory I was left with before the encasement. A small girl, rosy cheeks and bright brown eyes under the sun. 

“Hi papa.” I hear her voice whisper, not as carefree as I remember. I worry how much of memory is just wistful thinking. Time and Grief can do that to the spirit.

I want to call out her name and hold her, the tree sways its branches in answer for me instead and softens itself to embrace her the way I can’t.

“These talks felt easier when I was a girl. I would tell you the things that hadn’t changed, the things you didn’t miss because you were still here. My favorite color, my disgust for broccoli, that my favorite story was the last one you read to me even though I don’t remember the words now. But there are things that have changed, you’re missing so much.”

I wish I could tell her I haven’t missed a thing. Not really. Unless it’s the sight of her, feeling her small hand grow. But I am here, always here. I know the fears she only says aloud to the moonlight, the name of her first heartbreak, the quiet that followed with her absence to university, the comforting weight of her return on the grass, her wedding ceremony.

“Papa, I wish you were here. Marcus and I, we’re… You’re going to be a grandfather.” I can feel the softness of her palm on the hardened sap that separates us. It feels just like the warmth from the sun’s rays on the tips of the leaves in summer time.

“See you soon papa.” It feels like the piercing frost of winter when she pulls away, the sound of her footsteps dull as she moves further and further away.

And so I wait.