The monstrous tree
I hated the tree where my son hanged himself and felt compelled to visit it at all hours of the day or night.
After my son, Emile, died by suicide I did things I would never have done in normal circumstances.
I became completely obsessed with the weepy willow tree where he hanged himself. That tree was like a stark reminder to me. I could see the monstrous thing every time I drove out of my gate.
One day I bought a gallon of diesel and tried to burn it down. It refused to burn. I was hysterical, cursing it. Neighbors called the police and I was arrested for arson. After a chat with the police chaplain, I was released. That drove me crazy. I wanted to be locked up, I had to suffer.
Drunk out of my mind, one night at an ungodly hour I tried to climb into it. God knows why, I lost control of myself. Halfway up I fell out of it. Lying under the tree, ugly sobbing, like only drunk people can. The neighborhood dogs started barking, and a neighbor screamed at me to go home! I screamed back with a fuck you! Stumbling home in the dark, tears and snot streaming down my face.
I wrote poems on pieces of paper and nailed them to the tree. They were crazy ramblings that made no sense at all.
On the first anniversary of his death, I put flowers under the tree, poems, a beautiful candle, and a letter. Two guys were sitting under the tree and at first, I wanted to ask them to leave. They were playing guitar and probably smoking dope, and I told them about Emile. I asked the one with the guitar if he could play something for me. Perhaps because of the insanity raging in me, I felt it was a message from my son. It touched me deeply that kids who didn’t know me could be so kind.
My youngest son helped me to let go of the weepy willow tree (what an apt name). He told me that Emile wasn't there, he only used it as his launching pad to heaven.
After my husband passed away, I sold my house and moved to another area. I never went back to the tree. A few years ago, a young girl we knew also used that tree to leave this worldly plane.
Thanks for reading my words.
Namaste
My daughter’s boyfriend took his own life a few years back, leaving her a hollowed out version of her former self. His mother said to me that her feelings were “indescribable”. He had been severely depressed for some time, and he was dealing with some painful knock backs in his life, but no one saw suicide coming. I remember my daughter telling me that he had used the belt of his dressing gown, and she was tormented by this because he had always played with it as a comforting thing when he was feeling stressed. No wonder you felt so many agonising feelings about the tree. Sending you love ❤️ ❤️🩹
This is raw and deeply familiar. I lost my partner to suicide, and I understand the desperate need to suffer, the fixation on places that feel like echoes of them. Your story captures the strange, messy path of grief. Thank you for sharing!