This week the absolutely mammoth maple tree in front of our house was cut down and it knocked me for a bit of an emotional loop.

The tree has not only been here since we moved in, but it’s also been on this street, right in that spot for over 100 years.

Since we’ve moved here, though, my neighbor and I have looked at that tree, especially the top of it, and watched the branches blow in the wind and wondered what would happen if the top of it snapped off.

For the most part I was comfortable in knowing I wouldn’t have to make a decision on the tree because we didn’t have the money to have it cut down. I liked the shade from it in the summer and watching the colors change on it during the autumn.

Sure, I worried some if the winds were high, but it was a sturdy tree. It’d been there for 100 years. The base was actually huge. It wasn’t going anywhere. Not the whole tree anyhow. Ahem. Hopefully. Insert cautiously optimistic worried grimace here.

This winter, though, a couple larger limbs fell off into our yard and I wondered what would happen if an even larger one broke off and hit either our house or the neighbors.

Then we had more than one wind advisory over the winter. I found myself looking up at the top of the tree (as far as I could look anyhow) several times over the last few months, hoping I wouldn’t hear a crack at some point. One day a limb did come down and that’s when the fear started to become more of a reality.

I knew we still didn’t have the money to have it taken down. Two years ago we were quoted a very high amount of money to have it removed. Our neighbors offered to go in halfway with us, but I still didn’t know where we would find the money to do it.

To make a long story short, the neighbors ended up talking to a tree cutting company who offered them a great deal to bring the tree down so they took the deal after they consulted us.

We couldn’t turn the opportunity down.

I no longer had my excuse of not having the money because the neighbors offered to pay for it. I had to face the fact that the tree would really have to come down and though I knew it was necessary, I didn’t want it to happen – well, in some ways. In other ways I did want it to happen.

I am someone who hates change and this would be a very big change. That tree had sheltered us from the sun, winds, snow for the five years we’ve lived here, but it has also sheltered other families for 100 years.

Imagine all it has seen over the years. The invention of cars, or at least better ones, men marching off to war, new houses going up, the street in front of it being paved. A couple of years before we moved here it even survived a tornado that ripped up many trees around it and tore part of the steeple off the church the tree overlooked.

As a Christian I don’t believe trees are alive, but I do believe God created them. As far as I know this tree was planted by either the town or the residents on the street since there was  row of them perfectly aligned up the side of the street. God created trees and from them came saplings to be planted though.

This tree brought beauty and personality to the view out our front window these past five years. Shielding us from the sun was one of the most helpful features it offered because our house has stayed very cool even without air conditioning because of the shade of the tree. Installing air conditioners is not easy in this house because we have roll out windows. We  have to use portable air conditioners.

This change is something we will have to simply adapt to this summer. Sitting on the front porch to read a book might not be as nice because the shade of the tree is now gone.

But . . .  again  . . . the tree was extremely tall and if some of the limbs had broken off from higher up it could have taken out a front porch or one of our cars at least, if not more. Someone could have been very hurt or even killed.

As an aside, I don’t remember ever seeing such a tall maple in my life. If some of those higher limbs broke off and came crashing down? Yikes! I hesitate to think of the damage it would have caused.

So, Wednesday night the neighbors let us know that the tree cutting service would be there the next day to take the tree down. It was a very fast turn around from when they suggested the plan to when it was implemented. I barely had time to adjust which might have been good since I probably would have ruminated and stressed over it all for much too long.

The company arrived at 7:30 a.m. and started cutting at 7:40 a.m.

I watched the process for the entire day – fascinated with how it was taken down chunk by chunk. I wasn’t terribly sad when I watched it come down because the process was mesmerizing. The sadness came later in the day and I did let myself cry some — even though my family seemed to think I was being silly.

There was a team of about six people but the owner of the company did all the cutting. He worked almost consistently all day with only a small lunch break. His arms had to be killing him at the end of the day.

We were told at the end of the day the center of the tree where it branched off was rotting and there were ants living inside. There was also water running through the base. It was a necessary removal for sure.

Now our house is much brighter (almost too bright for me) and we have a totally different view of the town. The leaves haven’t come back on our trees yet so it’s a little sad and brown outside our window at the moment but we are seeing some buds pop out on the branches. I’m trying not to remember how the buds were coming out on our maple too and how it would have been blooming soon, it’s canopy spreading over our house, our street, and our parking space across the road.

(The view of our small town from the bucket)

I try not to think about the animals or birds who might have made the tree their home.

I try not to remember how I could see that tree from the  main highway as we came back from our parents or how I often took it for granted and didn’t take the time to look up at it’s towering branches.

For me the tree was more than a tree. It was a symbol of normalcy, of comfort, of the expected.

I don’t like unexpected things. I don’t like change. I don’t like remembering that much more than losing a tree is changing in our lives these days.

My parents are getting older, my health is sometimes wonky, my son is about to graduate high school, my daughter needs to make new friends and I feel like I need to find them, and the world is absolutely crazy.

With the tree gone I feel like my normal world is no longer normal in some ways. I feel like a piece of me has been taken away, as odd as that sounds.

The day after the tree was removed I looked out in our backyard at another towering maple and whispered to it, “Don’t worry, I won’t let anyone take you.”

And I won’t. I’m going to be very protective of the trees in our backyard now.

Yes, I know the tree had to be taken down before it came down without our permission, and I am so grateful to great neighbors who were so generous to help us all out, but still . . . I miss our tree, I miss my normal routine of looking out at it while I sipped my tea in the morning, and I miss the feeling of normalcy having it there gave me.

I’ll adjust. I’ll be okay. I’ve (almost) already accepted it.

I won’t, however, feel guilty for taking a little bit longer to mourn it.