The Lilac Bush

I transplanted a lilac bush right outside my bedroom window. I dug it carefully out of the ground at my grandma’s. As a child I played in her wild wood, which was also my backyard. She had pin cherry trees, lilac bushes, rose bushes, birch, and moss and ferns. There was a ditch through the whole area, as a child it seemed like a river. Wonderful place to run to. The dream, of course, was to transplant this happy bit of my childhood into my adult life and wake up from restful dreams to the sweet smell of lilac wafting through the open window on lazy summer mornings. The bush is dying.

It’s been thriving for 6 or so years. Every year more blossoms, every year more growth. Two years ago it began to turn brown in the summer, a fungus or rot or parasite. I don’t know the intricacies of lilacs. I pruned. I watered. Last fall it seemed hopeless. By July it had curled up leaves, black/brown, and I anticipated cutting it down. I couldn’t do it in the fall with so much already turning from bright flaming colors to the ash grey of winter. And during the winter months, well, one can hardly discriminate the dead from the sleeping. Now it’s spring, with the yellow green of buds barely coming out to the sun. This time of year is ugly to me, as that which was coldly beautiful in the white frozen winter thaws to dirty life.

My lilac tree has green buds on it. Just a part of it, not the whole thing. It’s sickly. The leaves that dried and curled last summer are still on some of the branches and other branches live with those lovely buds of promise. I cannot cut it down now. But I am terrified to prune. So much would have to go. This branch, with its decay, that branch with its death. Another branch with its criticism of life itself, and the branch whose demons have choked the promise of spring from memory. In the pruning I could kill it. There might not be enough left sustain life. The roots of my happy childhood are shallow and the soul of the tree is not at home. If I begin to cut away that which is dead and that which is dying, the sickness, who can tell me if I might not cut away the soul of the tree? Who can tell me if the soul of the lilac is still not deep in the ground at grandma’s, in the wild wood, where I ran when I was sad?