Tree Cathedrals in Heaven

Today my Grandmother passed away. She was born in 1918 and has seen so much in her life time. She was born when women were legally second class citizens and did not have the right to vote in this country. She lived through World War II, the great depression and too many other wars. I am not going to say that she was an extraordinary woman. She was a normal woman trying to survive in a world that was constantly changing, not fair and rarely kind.

                One thing I remember about my grandmother was how much she loved to walk. Scant weeks before she lay down for the final time, she was out trying to walk in her neighborhood. Never mind that she’d been very weak all winter and could barely make it up and down the stairs. She loved to walk and was determined to walk her way back into health.

                When I was a child and she lived near us just on the edge of the Ottawa National forest, she would walk every day to a particular place a couple miles down the dirt road. She usually let us come with her, and if you have any experience with children, you know how much a sacrifice that was. She put up with our questions and chatter. She ignored our pleas to only walk as far as the winter green patch or to go pick blue berries instead. Every day she walked to her cathedral. She was a religious woman, but did not attend church. She found her moment with god in a little patch of woodland on the side of an ordinary road. The trees were average size, nothing spectacular. But the ascending hill turned these trees into a great arching green canopy that sheltered the small valley below. She would point out the small rise that was the pulpit of the preacher and the overgrown abandoned railroad bed was the long hill where the choir stood. She would spend what seemed like an eternity to a small child in her green cathedral, reveling in the beauty of its green filtered light and earthy smell.

                Several years ago, they cut down her cathedral. We protested that the hills were too steep and the land would erode. We pointed out how small and worthless the trees were. None of that mattered. They clear cut it anyway. They slashed and hauled away my grandmother’s cathedral to make paper, probably to for junk mail that no one wants. I never had the heart to tell my grandmother her sacred place was gone. There was no point in distressing her since it was out of reach of her current life.

                But today, on the day my grandmother has finally gone to her long home, I find comfort in the idea that her green cathedral is in heaven waiting for her. Perhaps it was too perfect for earth and can now only exist in heaven with my grandmother to give her destination for her daily walks. Good bye Gramma.