Planting Apple Trees

I spent the weekend in Pennsylvania celebrating my grandmother Edna's 80th birthday. She had difficult year and it would have been worth celebrating its end even if it hadn't been the beginning of her 9th decade of life. Most of the family were there and it was a good time. I was glad to be a part of it.

We were also celebrating the fact that her husband Kermit, my grandfather, is still with us. He spent a couple weeks in early December in the hospital trying to stay alive. Complications following a relatively simple surgery almost took him down. At the time, no one knew if he would make it to see the new year.

But he did and we're all glad.

On Friday afternoon I sat with him and my grandmother eating chocolate-covered pretzels and talking about the experience. The doctor had told them afterward that my grandfather was "knocking at death's door" during those days. Kermit laughed as he remembered his crazy, drug-induced dreams. At one point, he was positive that he and Edna had given birth to a new baby. Somewhere along the way, in his dreams, he bought a herd of cattle that now needed a barn and a fence. One day he confided in Edna that they were going to have to make a break for it, that the doctors didn't know what they were doing, that they might have to sleep in the car that night.

Now here's the thing: active imaginations run in the family. You don't need to administer drugs to discover that. I've got my share of the inheritance, which is mostly good, but sometimes it can be a burden. Also, I tend to be a bit of a worrier, which is almost always a burden. Occasionally, out of the blue, I'll find myself running down a mental list of potential tragedies, that HAVE happened before, things that COULD VERY WELL HAPPEN right now right here. It's a form of diseased entertainment, I guess, for an overactive mind, but it rarely leads to anything good. This is probably why on some mornings I make plans to run away to a monastery and never come back.

The problem is that this imagining leads to questions, which are mostly of the type which can't be answered very solidly, at least not in the flesh-and-blood, bricks-and-mortar sense. This brings about a vague sensation of unease, which leads to more questions, and more unease, which all begin to spiral slowly downward in great sweeping circles.

So, as a result, I can get squirmy when I get around to thinking about death. I believe in God and, more than that, I believe in Christ. I even mostly-believe most of the fluff about angels and streets of gold. But things still get weird for me sometimes; the sheer edge of life dropping off into the unknown still rattles me a little when I take it seriously.

So, when my grandfather finished his stories about his brush with death, there was a pause while I sat quietly, not knowing what to say, inescapably aware of his fragility and of the shortness of the days.

And then, with a sparkle in his eye, he said that he had planted an apple tree in the front yard, as if it were nothing, as if it were the most natural thing for an old man at the end of his career to do. "I'll need to trim the top," he said, "so that I can still reach the apples." I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and slowly asked the obvious question, edging myself inch by inch closer to that dropoff: "How long until it will bear fruit?"

And then he turned to me with that radiant grin of his and a secretive wink that let me in on the big joke, which I think is one of God's favorite things. "Oh, maybe in about six years or so," he said. Which, for someone whose life was just a few weeks ago being measured in terms of minutes and hours, is a beautiful and outrageous thing to say. Which is just one of the reasons why I'm really glad he's still around.