Week 7 Entry...
It was a bright, sunny afternoon when I stood beneath the Jack pine for the last time.
The Jack pine, despite its name, was actually a towering white pine, easily reaching 180 feet high if it was a foot, standing at the approximate middle of the farm (the only thing I ever heard my grandmother and grandfather's place called). An old plow mule named Jack, who had served the family faithfully in the 20's and 30's, was buried underneath it and was the reason for the tree's name.
The farm had been in the family pretty much forever -- Grandma and Grandpa raised their three sons and one daughter on its eighty acres, using first Jack and then the new tractors to till the fields and harvest the crops. Animals were raised not as a hobby, but to provide meat and eggs for the family; during the hard times of the Great Depression, they had considered eating Jack more than once, but never got quite that desperate.
The farm was always the hub of the family as it grew and grew. My one uncle alone had eight children, almost all of whom stayed in the area and had many children of their own. Though my father was the one son to move a few states away, our family still returned to the farm for several weeks each summer to rejoin with uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, cousins, and everyone else. Even after my grandfather died at a somewhat early age from lung cancer, Grandma continued to live on the farm by herself for almost twenty years, tending the gardens and using a small .410 shotgun to shoot any pesky varmint that crossed her path. (No one messed with my grandmother, not even the squirrels.) She cooked the big family meals, sat and played cards with all the grandchildren, and laughed as she took sheet after sheet of cookies out of the oven; she said she never wanted to live anywhere else.
Sadly, despite her intentions, old age finally caught up with my grandmother. She became unable to reliably care for herself as memory and physical issues began to manifest, and it became clear she was no longer safe living alone. Fiercely independent even then, she refused to be taken in by any of the kids, but consented to an assisted-living senior apartment near my parents' home. While she held onto the farm for a few more years, I think always hoping her health would miraculously improve enough so she could return, she eventually enlisted my father to help her sell it.
My parents made several trips back to the farm over the next year, sometimes with grandma and sometimes without, to take care of the legalities and also to sort through a lifetime's accumulated possessions. Some items were taken by local family members and many things went to the landfill, while numerous garage sales slowly chipped away at most of the rest. Finally, with a buyer finally lined up and possession set to change hands a couple weeks later, my parents asked me to make the final trip to the farm with them, so they could take two vehicles -- a car so Grandma would be comfortable for the last visit, and a truck to haul the last few remaining items away with us. (While my mother and father still drive to this day, neither are up to 12-hour trips behind the wheel without relief.)
That last day at the farm, several of the grandkids and great-grandkids came out to the farm to see Grandma, and to cart away the remaining larger-sized things that they could use (such as the beds and a couch we'd slept on the night before). As the time to leave approached, Grandma said she wanted a few minutes in the house to herself, which only made sense -- she'd spent nearly 70 years at the farm. Mom and Dad went to clear some branches from the front and side yards, while I took my last walk down to the Jack pine.
It was just as I remembered it, even though by then it had been years since I'd been to the farm. The walk through the tall grass, along the two-wheeled path still faintly visible from years of tractors driving to the lower fields, transported me to my childhood. I was eight years old again, chasing the plentiful butterflies as they flitted about me, brushing the grasshoppers from my pants who had jumped up to hitch a ride; the only reminders of reality were my tears.
Finally, I reached the tall tree and stepped into its welcome shade. I located the naturally square stone marking Jack's grave and pulled away the grasses that had grown up around it. Sitting down, I leaned back against the broad, rough trunk, stretching my legs out before me. I closed my eyes for a few brief minutes, making my peace with what was to come and thanking the farm for all it had given me over the years.
At last, I stood and and made my way back to the farmhouse. I called to my parents that I'd make the final walk-through of the place, checking the closets and the attic and basement for anything left behind. They nodded agreement, gathering the duffel bags and coolers we'd brought with us and bringing them to the vehicles.
Through the garage, up the three wood steps to the kitchen, on into the sitting room where I read a tiny paperback version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea every summer when I arrived, even after I was into my 20s. Into each of the bedrooms, back to the dining room, and down into the basement. It had always somewhat frightened me as a child, with its dark places and farm tools hanging on hooks everywhere, but now looked like the simple basement it had always been (even if my childhood imagination had seen monsters in old chests and behind the furnace). Back up to the main floor, and then on into the attic, where my brothers slept when we visited, not minding the occasional bat or mouse that sometimes found their way in there.
I went back downstairs and out to the garage, looking up in to the rafters one last time for anything still lurking there, but found nothing. I opened the door to the outside and stepped through.
"Did you check everything -- anything still needing to come out?" my father asked as I stepped out the garage doorway. I could see Grandma was already in the car, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue; she gave me a smile anyway, though, and I knew she'd made her peace as well.
"Nope, nothing," I said as I heard the slap of the screen door closing behind me for the last time. "Nothing's left."
While the answer worked acceptably for the literal question being asked (there certainly were no personal items left in the house), the answer had a deeper meaning for me. At that moment, the farm ceased to be a place that was my family's, a place of summertime adventures and bustling family gatherings. It became just a vacant property, waiting silently for the next owner to take possession. I got behind the wheel of the truck, waited for my father to get the car turned around and headed out first, and then pulled out of the driveway and turned toward the highway. I didn't look back.
There will come a time when the farm no longer bears any physical resemblance to the way it was when I knew it. The farmhouse will be (perhaps may already have been) torn down, the rolling acres will be plotted and parceled off for new homes, the rusted-out old Studebaker deep in the back woods that my brothers and I played in will be hauled away for scrap. And at some point, even that beautiful tall tree in the center of the farm will come down, whether by the intentional hand of man or by the simple passage of more and more time.
The Jack pine will always stand in my heart and my mind, though, its long green branches forever reaching out to provide a cool and peaceful shade for all my memories.
This is my entry for the seventh week of Season 8 of therealljidol. The prompt this week was 'bupkis.' As always, thanks for reading.