Willow Weeps

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Alone with myself
The trees bend
to caress me
The shade hugs
my heart.
- Candy Polgar

I almost was a willow.

It is the name my mother chose for me, but Dad wouldn’t have it, too hippy. I never liked the sound of the name, and yet I can’t look at a willow tree without feeling an almost-kinship. I could have been one of you…but I’m not.

Yesterday I drove an hour and a half through a thunderstorm and pouring rain to my parents’ house. The old house, the one they are trying to sell. The house my sister lived and died in. I hadn’t planned the trip, but after breaking down in the shower fifteen minutes before leaving for chiropractor appointments and shopping, I called my mom to see if they had plans. Grief comes unexpectedly sometimes, even when I really should be expecting it. I kept my appointment, skipped shopping, and tried to keep my muscles from tensing my freshly aligned skeletal system back out of sync. I really hate highway driving in the rain and I normally would have been a stress mess, but I wasn’t. There is a kind of fatalism that can come with deep grieving. I was supposed to go, so I would be fine. And I was.

When the sun came out there was no rainbow, but we drove to a nature center nearby and hiked a trail to an overlook. The tower we climbed wasn’t high, but it offered a good view of the marsh below full of willow trees and cattails, with some water visible as a patch of bright green, and two pink rose bushes we spied through the swaying reeds. Shoulder to shoulder, my mother and I spent a long time looking out. The sun was melting warm, the girls were happily squabbling over the mounted binoculars, and the wind kept the reeds and willows in almost constant motion. Grief is a fog that settles in and stays, but it also offers up moments like these, moments of pure presence. My spirit danced with the wind in the reeds, the hushed sound of it almost hypnotic. My little sister was not turning nineteen that day, just as she hadn’t turned eighteen last year, seventeen the year before that, sixteen the year before that, fifteen…forever almost fifteen. It would never be OK. I was beginning to accept this.

Among the trees that grow in North America, willow might be the most versatile. Nearly impossible to eradicate as long as the ground is wet enough, a freshly cut branch stuck in the earth can grow a new tree—even if it’s stuck wrong end down. Willow was widely used before plastic to make containers of all kinds including baskets. It was woven into wicker, thatched roofs, made rope, and even spun into clothing. Willow wood was a favorite for making shelters, canoes, coffins, beehives, and even clogs¹. Willow has also been used medicinally to relieve pain and inflammation, treat fevers and colds, and can relieve skin conditions such as acne and dandruff². Because it only lives near abundant water, willow is associated with the moon and, therefore, with the feminine and feminine cycles; because it is widely regenerative, it is associated with transformation and the cycle of death and rebirth. Willow is also traditionally associated with grief.