How a tree helped me grieve.
Christmas 2016 was a weird one: I had 3-month-old twins. I was in the sort of survival mode that doesn’t allow for any thoughts beyond sustenance, sleep and basic hygiene. Usually, my partner and I would travel interstate to be with one of our families for Christmas, but this year we decided to stay home and focus on keeping the newborns alive and ourselves sane.
A few years earlier my Mum had been diagnosed with stage 4 adrenal cancer. With chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and successive surgeries she’d slowed the spread of this rare but very aggressive cancer. We knew there was no cure, but by some miracle the doctors had allowed Mum to live well past the average — long enough to see her first grandchildren. She’d been battling the cancer for so long that it’d become the norm, and I think I became oblivious to her slow but serious decline. So, when I got a ‘goodbye’ phone call from Mum in the days before Christmas, I was shocked.
She could feel she was losing the battle. She told me through her tears how much she loved me.
We drove 10 hours on Christmas day, stopping at service stations to eat cold sausage rolls and to breastfeed. By the time we arrived at her house, she was delirious and in intense pain. I got to see Mum in a physical sense, but mentally she was already gone. I didn’t get the closure I’d hoped for, but life rarely goes the way you hope or plan. We stayed a few days until the sight of her pain became too difficult to watch. Mum hung on in that twilight world of opioids for another 2 months.
When I eventually got the call from Dad that she’d died — I felt sadness, but also relief. Her pain and struggle were over.
If anything, the daily life of looking after twins had gotten even harder and I struggled to find the head space to process my feelings on her death. I cried while I washed the dishes. Then it was back to endless breastfeeding and attempts at having an uninterrupted shower.
When the boys were about 18 months I went back to full-time work. Having the space away from the kids gave me a bit more mental breathing space (anyone who says parenting is easier than working is lying). My train commute was a blessed time to think. One day, I’d been feeling the loss of Mum more heavily than usual and had been thinking about her on the train ride home.
I looked with unfocused eyes out the window and thought about how much she loved nature — she was always happiest surrounded by bush or ocean. She had an artist’s eye for the beauty of a curved sandbar or the colourful plumage of a bird. She would paint and photograph various trees, but the spotted gum forests near my teenage home were her favourites. Something about the lines and spots made by the bark resonated with her. These patterns permeated her life — her paintings, her decor, and even her clothes and jewellery were inspired by the bark of these trees.
Eventually the train arrived at my station and I started walking home with my heavy heart and a head full of thoughts of Mum. That was when I looked up to see some trees I’d never noticed before. They were shining in the glow of the sunset.
The trees’ bark was a rich texture of luminous silver and rose gold. It made me think of the wallpaper in the lobby of an expensive hotel.
I immediately fell in love with these trees.
I looked for them every day as I went to and from the train station, or took the kids to the park. Every day I would walk past these trees and think of Mum. I’m not sure why, but they brought me some comfort as I worked through my grief. Months later I found out they’re called ‘Candlebark’ for the rough bark near their base.
What I hadn’t realised before, was the power of something physical to help you remember someone. Before she died, Mum had given me a teapot — and I’d sometimes use it to make a pot of tea — but it didn’t quite represent her, or what she means to me. I needed something I could touch that felt like it contained her essence.
The candlebark trees gave me what I was missing. I could see something in these luminous trees that represented Mum’s spirit. I could imagine showing the trees to her and how much she’d have appreciated the colours, patterns and textures with me — camera clicking away.
Months later, in the intense heat of summer of 2019 — as devastating fires were ripping through Australia and destroying bushland roughly the size of Ireland — the trees shed their bark. They revealed a raw, deep red undercoat that seemed to express the pain of the burning. It was like they were grieving their tree-brethren lost in the fires.
Over the following year, the deep red softened to the rose gold I’d fallen in love with. The bark gradually became grey-silver, before the cycle of shedding started again. Once the pandemic hit, as my world shrunk in seemingly-endless Covid lockdowns, I knew I could always walk down the street and visit my ‘spirit’ trees. One reliable thing in a world of turmoil.
I’m moving away from this house and these trees at the end of the year. I’ll probably miss my trees more than anything else about our home. Hopefully I’ll find another one (or five) wherever we end up. Or perhaps I’ll collect some seeds and one day grow a tree in honour of Mum.
Then I could sit in its dappled light, with the golden bark against my back — and think about love, and loss, and beauty.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this, check out more of my (free) Medium articles here: A little bit about me and my writing.
