Shelley McEuen
Pink Confetti
It was the trees that sold me on my house. Towering maples and pink-blooming Canadian Chokecherries, they spoke of secure enfolding, everlasting groundedness, as the seasons turned. And as a woman newly divorced and anticipating the difficulty of joint custody of a three-year- old daughter, “security" and “groundedness” were things I desperately craved.
The house had plenty of other selling points, admittedly. The quaint exterior caught my attention while out on a run with its curved sidelight windows flanking the front door and simple, sweet porch. The house seemed to invite window boxes. In an historic neighborhood in south-central Idaho, my 1930s Sears and Roebuck bungalow was purchased long prior to the COVID-19 upheaval and the subsequent housing craze that has claimed much of the west, including my small town, whose housing prices now rival those in nearby hipster Boise or Missoula, Montana.
But the trees were definitely the deal-breaker. Whereas author and soil scientist Hope Jahren states, most everyone has a favorite tree from their childhood, the bond was especially strong for me, starting with a birch in my grandparent's front yard in Walla Walla, Washington. I knew this tree intimately because I spent time as often as possible sitting in its accessible, low limbs, surveying the neighborhood, peeling its fragile, papery bark to roll into fake cigarettes or use for small notes. In every photograph of me taken in that tree, I am smiling.
The maple tree shading my front yard—the first of my little “forest” to catch my attention on that now long-ago run—was presumably planted when the house was built, making it around 91 years old. My historic neighborhood is filled with similar enormous maples and red Canadian Chokecherry trees, voraciously growing and in constant need of pruning to help contain their abundance. When they do break, these tree limbs snag electrical lines and more than once during my residency have damaged cars now lining the narrow neighborhood streets, byways never intended for SUVs, much less families with numerous vehicles.
Trees are integral to the overall ambience of my neighborhood, providing a cozy framework to my property, even as they take up their own generous measure of space. Filling the sky, these behemoths create a semblance of privacy, neighboring windows often directly across from one another, small driveways providing the only buffer. In real estate ads, the trees appear as an important selling point. I love my trees.
But they’re dying.
To look at them, you would never know.
When a horticulturist from the college where I work casually offered the diagnosis, I was incredulous. These trees are vibrant and healthy; have you seen the number of leaf bags we fill each fall? But the professor had a name—Verticillium Wilt, a fungal disease common in maples. In fact, he continued, the disease had likely infected the entire neighborhood, voracious as it is, and all the trees lining my street were very likely suffering the same affliction.
Verticillium Wilt can lie dormant in soils for up to ten years. Working stealthily underground, it colonizes roots, infecting the entire vascular system of trees, particularly those planted in close proximity, such as those in our neighborhood. The disease infects the xylem or water-conducting tissues in the tree, effectively plugging up their hydration system and blocking the tree's ability to transmit water. Parts of the tree—namely new branches and offshoots—wither and die. Now that I know this, I actively look for (and identify) signs of the disease, which presents as clumps of dead limbs amidst the new leafy green. If I wasn't looking, I would likely never have noticed the way these seemingly healthy trees are unable to maintain a regular shape. Now I can't stop seeking and seeing the dead clumps in my trees—rigid limbs prone to snapping and falling.
***
My second husband came into my life seven years after I bought the house, and we were married three years later. He never questioned why my ex lived eight houses down the street. His name is Kjel. Any way you spell it, it’s pronounced as a shortened version of my name (“Shell”), and we hear the usual rounds of jokes—"How hard did you have to search to find somebody with your same name?"
Kjel regularly puts nutrient spikes in the ground around our trees, our stubborn, clay-like soil no match for his strong forearms. Added nutrients can prolong tree life, we've learned, along with ensuring abundant watering and timely trimming. But there is nothing we can do about the fungus, which will continue to prosper and eventually take the tree's life prematurely. We have between five and ten more years of enjoying these trees before they will begin to fail in earnest and need to be removed.
The same month the horticulturalist offered the bad news, Kjel went to see a neurologist.
What started as a small tremor in his right hand—an almost imperceptible, slight flutter when he was particularly tired—had continued to worsen. This, and some odd cramping in his right leg led Kjel to seek a medical professional, who diagnosed, with a high degree of certainty, Parkinson's Disease. To say "diagnosis" sounds solid and sure, but diagnosing Parkinson's is notoriously challenging, as the disease presents differently for every patient. My partner, whose hands are the size of my feet and whose leg strength is envied by the lycra-clad crowd in our cycling classes, is experiencing nerve cell damage. While most of us experience stable protein function in our brains—a condition we never consider—Kjel's brain proteins are starting to clump or fold, and nobody really knows why. This folding results in compromised dopamine levels, and my husband's have started to drop and will continue to lessen over time. Dopamine being the neurotransmitter between nerve cells and muscle cells, his bodily movements will become increasingly more compromised and stiff. Balance will most assuredly become an issue. Kjel is already experiencing the extreme fatigue with which most Parkinson's patients eventually suffer.
I have just started to see Kjel's altered walk. If you didn't know him, you wouldn't notice, just like the first tremors, but his gait is slightly different, stiffer on one side. The involuntary contraction of muscles causes my husband's toes to curl and the cramping can be severe, particularly at night, depending on what he's been eating or drinking. He is acutely aware of his altered gait, and he actively works to steady it. In a move that parallels placing those nutrition spikes around our trees, my husband and I have slowly and consistently altered our diet to a largely plant-based, whole food palate, knowing diet and nutrition are proven factors in the rate of Parkinson's symptoms increasing. Kjel is a regular practitioner of yoga, and he cycles regularly. His neurologist tells him he's doing "exemplary" and to "keep doing what he's doing."
But eventually, just as with our trees, the disease will win. Despite the medications and the lifestyle, Parkinson's will compromise my husband's quality of life in ways that will most likely require full-time assistance.
***
I find myself struggling these days with two sorrows that, while wholly different in degree, are similar in existential kind. I’ve long understood, of course, that to love something mortal is to accept a contract. All mortal beings, vegetal or animal, resilient and steadfast as they might seem at a given moment, will someday die. Now, however, that rational knowledge has come home to my heart.
Every time I find myself enjoying the beauty outside my window—and with spring will be the arrival of fresh blossoms on the Canadian Cherry—I also look for the newest congregation of dead limbs, always identifiable if I pause, narrow my gaze, and purposefully look beyond the beauty. While taking nothing away from my moment of aesthetic appreciation, this new perspective forces a realization that these trees are temporary. The street will outlive them, as will the house. New trees will likely take their place.
Grappling with my husband's condition is, of course, more personal, more challenging, and more emotionally complex. Most days, I choose to set aside this bill requiring later payment. This isn't hard to do. I glance over at him, sweating in our cycling class, hiking with me in the south hills near our home, or bent to a task requiring much focus and see only the strong, healthy man. He truly is the epitome of vitality. But his seizing, cramping pain and toe curling are becoming more frequent and a harbinger of more to come. I am reminded whenever I see him suddenly stop walking, deliberately adjust his gait, and continue with a slight correction that Parkinson's is advancing, the proteins in his brain continuing to fold.
Like just about everyone I know, particularly during the COVID 19 pandemic, I’ve made a habit of attempting to ignore the fact that the forces of natural mortality are ever with us. I’m used to thinking about daily minutia and packed schedules, to assuming that tomorrow will always come, especially when everything seems just fine on the surface. But these parallel processes manifest in the trees and in my husband are inexorably reminding me that to live with deep love is necessarily to offer up the most fragile, vulnerable parts of ourselves to a mystery whose constant is change. Newly reminded of my own mortality, I’m trying to live, these days, with more intention, more presence, more localized gratitude.
My trees have several years remaining; more pink confetti on the spring sidewalk, more flaming autumn leaves. Kjel, too, can anticipate considerable life yet to live. Telling myself that surrendering to grasping and misery will change nothing in either case, I vow to celebrate our localized, time-bound joys, to bear witness to lives beautifully lived, to tend where tending is possible, to accept where it is not.
And to remember, always, that love, by its very nature, requires letting go.
Shelley McEuen teaches English at the College of Southern Idaho. She earned a PhD from Idaho State University, and she founded Rock Creek Institute, a collaborative initiative working to connect community with the Rock Creek watershed. Shelley lives in Twin Falls with her husband, daughter, and two dogs.