My Tree

” Storms make trees take deeper roots,”- unknown

     My late husband was an incredible story teller. I always knew where he was whenever we went to parties, because all I would have to do was listen for the laughter of a crowd of people. Rob would be in the center of it all, making people laugh as he told one of his famous tales, tinged with humor. It is one of the things I always admired about him. People were drawn to him , because of how he could make them laugh, by relating stories in a way which  a CEO or a janitor could understand.  He wrote the following essay after he had been in treatment for 2 years. He had decided he could manage going to school and taking some classes to  fill his time between treatments when he was feeling good.  It truly was so like him to care about the natural world around him so for him to make the leap from comparing his struggle to the one of these trees was not surprising to me, but when I read it it still brings tears to my eyes to know how much he cared about what would happen to us, his family if he should pass. I know his struggle to live put in perspective what truly mattered in life. When you know you have limited time, it changes how you view life itself and how you should spend what limited time you have left.   After he passed this essay was read at his memorial service, It would be what he wanted. Posting it on this blog is another way  I can honor him of honoring him. I hope it can be helpful to those who read it. If it can help others to view how precious life is   in order to see what really matters in the end.

Robert W. Wigsten 

October 15, 2007 

My Tree 

I never write much about being sick; it depresses me too much, I guess. There seems to be plenty of depressing topics these days so I figure why add to that state of mind. It’s not that I am trying to hide my illness or disavow it but why give it more space than it deserves. I am not really writing about my cancer but needed to tell you that I have it so that you would know why I spend a lot of time driving to Providence and how I came about finding my tree. 

It was winter when I was first diagnosed with cancer and all the trees were dormant then, all their leaves having fallen the previous fall.

My tree looked like all the others. It took me quite a while to find my tree and recognize it for what it is. I had been driving to the hospital for months before I happened to notice it. I was no doubt pretty well distracted by what was happening to me.

Much of the time spent in the car was used thinking about any number of topics: am I going to die, what about my kids, my wife, my dog, etc.

My treatments were brutal and some days I really had to concentrate on just getting the car home, what with feeling lousy and all. Chemo messes you up in all kinds of ways. Some days your eyes get kind of messed up, not that you can’t drive, just that you have to pay more attention to the road, more than normal and you don’t look around too much. Other times you just feel really crappy after and just want to get home to the couch. Sometimes music is out, forget it. You just can’t take the noise no matter how beautiful it might be. When you get really deep into treatments and you’re really worried, you may have to give reading as well, you just can’t concentrate at all. So with all this going on, I now know why I didn’t see my tree right away. 

Another distraction came along in late March or so. On my way through Providence are the offices of R.I. Monthly magazine, there’s a sign on the building, and one day I noticed a kayak sitting in a roof rack on top of a black SUV. The kayak was blue on top, white on the bottom and longer than the car itself. That is one person who really loves kayaking, I thought to myself on the way by. It was still really cold out and the water must be freezing still. If you roll over now and get wet you run the risk of possibly dying from hypothermia. Hey, I thought, people jump out of perfectly good planes every day; it can’t be any crazier than that. I was usually in Providence at least once a week and would always look for the kayak on the roof. That person is nothing if not dedicated. The owner must use it a lot, after work probably, because it was on that roof until late November when they must have finally, begrudgingly no doubt, given up for the season. All winter I continued to go to the hospital and I would always be on the lookout for the kayak. I hoped I would be around until the spring to see it again. Sure enough, come April, the kayak was back on the roof. My kayaker was back on the water and I was still going to the hospital, which is actually a good thing, if you think about it.

A little further along my ride from the magazine office is a red light where my tree lives across the plaza. On the way to the hospital I don’t really notice it but on the way home many times I have to stop at the light and now it is directly out the passenger window. There are actually three trees there, lined up in a row, all the same kind, some kind of locust, I think. One day, waiting at the light, I noticed that one of the trees had some kind of band or strap around its trunk. As I looked I noticed that all three had the same straps. It must have been from when they were young, I surmised. The city of Providence must have had stakes in the ground with the bands around the trunks running out to the stakes to help hold them straight when they were little. The stakes were long gone but the bands had been left on.

The light turned green at some point and in my chemo haze I drove home.

About this time, spring going into summer, I would see my tree and waiting for the light to change, I began to notice something wrong. Those bands were still there and worse than that, they appeared to be digging into the bark, not just on mine but the others as well.

After a few weeks of this it was clear that no one from the city was going to be removing the bands anytime soon; the way the trunks looked they appeared to have been that way for quite awhile. How lazy can you be? I thought. You come and take the stakes out but don’t cut the straps off the trunks. Typical. The closer I looked at the three of them, I really saw how badly the last one, the southernmost one was suffering. Sitting at the light or looking at it from across the plaza, my tree was not doing well at all. Its cousins in line were pretty much leafed out now but mine, I was beginning to call it mine at this point, had barely enough leaves to really continue life. Most of its branches, although green were leaf-less and the few leaves it did have were very small. I now realized what had been going on all these months I had been driving up here, the three of them were being strangled by the straps and this one here on the end, mine, may not make it through the year.

The next week I must have been rushed to get up to the hospital because on the way home I realized I had forgotten a knife. Sitting there in the car, I was thoroughly disgusted at myself. I am coming I told my tree, hang in there. This is what everyone tells you when you have cancer, hang in there.

What choice do you have? Hopefully the chemo can cut the cancer straps that are strangling you before it’s too late. I made sure, three times before the house, I left I had the knife the next week. When I got to the light I pulled the car around the corner, parked and shut off the engine. People were stopped at the  intersection watching me as I approached my tree. They really must have thought I was nuts but no one said anything, they just stared. All the car windows were down, it was warm, but after all I did have a knife.

I started with my tree first and it was worse than I thought. The band had nearly cut a complete circle around the trunk. If the circle had been completed, I think that would have been it for my little tree. Completely choked off from the ground, most trees quickly succumb and die. As I cut the bands off the others, who were better but still pretty bad, I kicked myself for not coming sooner. I could almost hear each of them sigh just a little as I hacked off the straps. Well, I’m here now and with a little luck, we’ll all make it.

It has been about three months since I removed the straps. My little tree has really made some progess, I am happy to report. Its cousins have let their leaves go yellow and are getting ready to drop them, it is October after all. My tree though, has been using the warm weather to store up some energy for next spring. Within a week or so of the strap coming off, its leaves, the few it had, began to green up noticeably. The tree then began to grow new leaves on the bare branches, slowly I admit but new growth nonetheless. As of last week it still had all green leaves and was going strong but winter is on its way. I am sure it has begun to get ready for the cold and is going to need a rest before the spring starts. I think if it can make it through until next spring it will be all right. It has some bark to repair and then try to catch up to its cousins nearby.

The kayaker has bought a new kayak that sits proudly on the roof of the SUV. This one is all white and is a real ocean kayak. It must have been purchased at an end of the season sale, the store not realizing that for this kayaker, end of the seasons means December, not August. With my new chemo routine ahead of me, there will come a day when I drive up to the city and the roof rack will be bare. The little tree will be naked of leaves but I will be hanging in there. At that point the spring won’t be too far off and I will certainly be looking for the kayak but most of all, for the first sign that my tree is still with us.