Dead Weight

Last week, an arborist named James came to cut down two dead aspen trees in our front yard. We planted them fourteen years ago, when our oldest son was a toddler. As our kids grew, so did the aspens. Trees quietly mark time in a way few other things can.

I hate watching trees fall.

After James cleaned up all the wood and was getting ready to leave, I asked him if he could remove the two stumps that remained. It looked like an unfinished job, and I really didn’t want the reminder of what had once been.

“No,” he said. “I can’t take out those stumps. If I do, the remaining living tree will die by tomorrow. If we want to save that tree, we need to keep everything intact.”

Aspens share one root system. Although on the surface they appear to be individual trees, they are connected underground, inextricably linked. And what happens to one tree affects the others.

Generally, we think that removing dead weight is a good thing.

We want to get rid of the old stuff to make room for the new. Like pulling weeds in the garden, cleaning out a closet, or deleting old photos.

But with aspens, the dead weight is necessary for life.

Maybe it is for us too.

We all have our own kind of tree stumps.

Regrettable choices. Wasted time. Work blunders. Failed relationships.

We carry our dead ends around like dead weight.

We try to tuck them away or pretend they don’t exist. We look for ways to erase the evidence of our past wrongs and lapses.

But perhaps we shouldn’t. Because our dead weight might support the parts of us that are still very much alive.

We would have walked through the closed doors in the past if given the chance. But had they not been closed, we wouldn’t have looked for another open door, the one that ended up being the right one.

Maybe what didn’t work out cleared the way for what did.

Maybe the mistakes were preparation and the suffering was redirection.

I look back on my life as one long series of decisions. My personal Choose Your Own Adventure book. Sometimes I made wise choices. Many other times I didn’t.

But if I had to do it all over again, I think I’d do it all the same. Because I carry every single one of those choices, big and small, within me. And I don’t know whether I’ll ever know which ones contributed to who I am right now.

I can’t see what mattered and what didn’t, because all my roots are intertwined. And all those roots lead to life, in one way or another.

The tree stumps in my front yard don’t look so beautiful, but they’re keeping the remaining aspen tree alive.

Maybe we need to thank our own dead weight for doing the same.