The symbolic fruit

It's been a warm day and it's cooling down now, but I can still feel the warmth from the concrete path rising to meet me as I walk down the yard. I've got my cuppa in one hand and my snacks in the other and I'm making my way down to the back of the yard. The trees are rustling in the breeze and the warmth that remains is reminding me that tomorrow is going to be another hot day.

I look around and the gardens are parched but that's not why I'm out here. I’m out here because I just want to remember. I just want to think and to relish in the fact that I have some time to myself to do so. I sit in my chair and start to remember all the fun times that the kids and I and hubby had. The laughter, the water fights and the friends and family in the backyard. I just want to remember before I leave.

The memories always seem to come in thick and fast in the evenings. Especially the evenings I spend sitting in the yard under canopy of the trees. I had taken to doing this more often of late, perhaps because I knew they were coming to an end. So, as I sit and remember I reflect, I pray, and I let go of all that came before and journey into what is to come.

Everyone else in the house is busy, final packing and final goodbyes to friends. We are on the move. This had been our home for a long time now and I was going to miss it and so it was with some apprehension that I had decided to do this. We had so many happy memories spent in this home and especially this yard. A yard filled to the brim with trees, some of them fruit trees and others, such as the elm I now sat under, were for shade and beauty. I relaxed and reminisced and chatted with hubby about times past and times to come.

My husband (Hubby I called him) had planted all our trees over the years since we had moved into this home about 15 years ago. He looked after them. He loved them and the fruit trees rewarded him with their fruit. He would wait like an excited child to pick the fruit, eat it, and produce beautiful pies and jams from the fruit they provided.

Eating fruit straight off the trees with the kids and letting the warm juices drip onto their faces and the ground as we all helped ourselves to whatever fresh delight we wanted, apples, apricots, peaches, or any of the other fruits our trees provided, as the mood took us.

I looked at each of these trees and remembered their succulent produce, I loved them. Hubby loved them. I allowed myself to look down towards the back of the yard where hubby’s favourite tree grew. It was the pear tree he planted, his beloved pear tree. Hubby was super proud of this tree. It produced a small number of perfectly formed beautiful small yellow pears, not many, but enough, making his extra efforts all feel worthwhile. He had his secret process with this tree. The pruning, fertilising, and the singing of secret songs to it, the secrets of his success with it, he claimed. “No-one else around here has a fruit bearing pear tree, do they?” Hubby would often ask me “No honey” I would always respond. It was our “thing”. I could hear him asking me this now.

I laugh to myself as I recall “the rules” for the pears. Eat any of the fruit but not these. These were not to be touched except by Hubby. They were rare and beautiful, and not for just random picking off their holding place by greedy sticky hands, they needed to be appreciated for what they were, a prize to be valued. So only Hubby would carefully pick them, at exactly the right time and present them to the family, with quite a bit of flourish and ceremony, a process we generally giggled at, but respected at the same time.

It had stopped bearing any fruit. Its position in the yard is at the very back along the fence line “espaliered” I believe is the correct term, for its branches were stretched out along wires along this fence, apparently to allow extra sunlight to reach into the inner most parts of a tree’s foliage and space was saved in this small area. I looked at this tree, as I had done many times since hubby left us, its branches devoid of any fruit yet again and I was puzzled. Personally, I thought it know it needed even more sunlight, as the life growing all around it from the many other trees had stolen some its rays.

Seeing that barren pear tree felt like a symbol of all that was wrong in my world. Surviving, growing yet not flourishing, draining the soil of nutrients, absorbing water, and taking up space yet not fulfilling its purpose, to flourish. My rays were not stolen by the other life around me but were stolen by the lack of life around me, hubby’s.

You see Hubby left us 2 years ago. Oh, I mean he did not mean to leave us, but leave us he did. The big C is what it is often called, or more accurately cancer, bowel cancer. Took him in his early 50’s far too young. Left us, that’s how it feels, all too soon the love, life and laughter of this home was taken away. Our boys made it to fully grown- just, but our daughter was only 9. It felt like the life was sucked out of us all.

Life became difficult, like trudging through mud on some days. His beloved garden suffered as well and became a kind of symbol of how life felt for us all. Most of the trees still bore fruit but we were all too tired, too stressed, and too busy to care and so the fruit often dropped to the ground, wasted. The sadness seemed to overwhelm every aspect of our lives and it was hard to see anything with the joy we had previously felt.

But now we are moving. Time does not stand still, and I decided it was time for us, for a change. The auction came and went, and we were set for our new path in life. It was with some fear and anxiety within me that I pondered if I had made the right decision? It was a big one to make as a completely solo parent, moving to another town with little family or friend’s support. Moving, across the state to where I secured a new job, a new life.

I shook myself out of my reverie as it was getting dark in the yard now, but I wandered once again down to the back of the yard to look one last time at the pear tree, I wanted to hold the vision of it in my mind forever as the symbol of what life had been and as I looked up I could see at the very top was a small perfectly formed pear. I blinked, wondering if had imagined what I was seeing, I looked again, it was there. It was out of my reach, but hanging, looking perfect. I left it as it wasn't ready to be picked, it wasn’t ready to fulfill its purpose. Looking at this pear that had taken so long to arrive after the pain of separation from its lover and in that moment, I knew, I knew this was what we had been through. We had suffered from his loss and the pain it brought and we had tried hard to grow and still flourish but had not succeeded. Once again, this beautiful tree provided a symbol for me. Instead of it showing what life was now, it showed me what life is to be. Perhaps hubby sent a sign? For me it was a settling in my spirit that I now knew that everything would be alright.

As I walked back into the house, a delicate smile crept across my face, and I whispered to no one in particular “I think we'll plant a pear tree at the new house” then I went and finished packing.