Beech Tree News Network

It took me four hours to put up my Christmas tree this year.  It’s a beautiful tree, but it’s one of those that you have to put together one limb at a time from the ground up.  It isn’t pre-lit, which means I had to string lights over and through each limb before moving on to the next. 
    As I decorated, I thought about Garey’s and my first tree.  It was 1975, we lived in a 12x70 trailer on some land he and his dad were mining.  We went out into the woods and cut a small cedar that we set up on a stereo table.  We drove into Morgantown to the dime store that existed on the square at that time, where we bought lights and ornaments and those foil icicles you find under your furniture and stuck to your sweaters weeks after the season is over.  Because it was ours, we thought the tree was beautiful.  I don’t remember any of the presents I got that year, but I will always remember that tree.
    Garey and I were so in love then.  When you are, adversity matters little.  When you aren’t, every little thing pricks your skin.  We went through some of those “not in love” years, when all we had to hold on to was hope that things would get better.  And they did.  Sometimes, I look back and wonder why I was so mad, why he was so mad, why we believed the worst about each other.  I don’t have an answer, I just have a life with a wonderful man, who is my husband.
    As I write this column, I hear Garey’s maniacal laughter echoing through the house all the way from the living room.  I know Alabama has just made a touchdown.  I wouldn’t even have to be privy to the information that he is watching a football game to know what that laugh means.  My cat, Figaro, jumps up from my lap when he hears it.  He is frightened.
    “It’s okay,” I tell him, “It’s just Garey watching an Alabama game.”
    Figaro settles back down onto the softness that is my sweat pant.  Normally, Fig is relegated to the utility room, not beyond, but I have been very sick this weekend, and it comforts me to have him near when I’m not feeling well.
    Garey has spent the last three days trying to help me through this.  He made sure I had a warm fire in the fireplace, because I hurt too bad to sleep anywhere but the living room couch.  He tried to find food that would sit well on my stomach, to little avail, but he tried.  He has cooked his own meals for the past three days, with no complaint.  He has always been like that.  Whatever I fix to eat, he’s always content with it.  I don’t remember him ever once complaining.  Garey grew up with a father who was never happy, a man who treated Garey’s mom with such disrespect.  Garey made the choice to be different, and I respect him for that probably more than anything.  There really is so much in life that comes down to choice.
    When I first met Garey, I didn’t have a very good sense of humor.  I came out of a home life filled with hurt and rejection.  I was pretty bitter.  Looking back, I realize it was Garey’s sense of humor that rescued me.  I would get so mad when he teased me about the seriousness with which I approached everything, but he persevered, and the walls came tumbling down—just like in Jericho. 
    Garey still makes me laugh a lot, like the time when I planted our willow tree, and my dad warned I shouldn’t have planted that particular tree, because legend has it that I would die as soon as the willow got large enough to shade my grave.  Years later, Garey came into the house with his cap scuffed up, his hair askew and scratches on his face. 
    “I’m starting to believe that stuff about the willow tree shading your grave,” he said.  “I just got clothes-lined by that lower limb.”
    He went to the utility room and came back with the pruning saw.  He wasn’t quite ready to leave this earth.
    This year, is our forty-first Christmas together.  It has fallen to me to decorate the house and put up the tree each year, although there was that one year when Garey volunteered to help.  The kids were young and it had been a particularly stressful holiday season.  I guess, he sensed how overwhelmed I was.  When he offered to help, I asked if he could put up the tree.  His face fell, but he had offered, so he trudged back to the area where I keep all the decorations.  I could hear him rattling around back there as I was cooking in the kitchen. 
    Garey returned fifteen minutes later with a jubilant look, “It’s done,” he said.
    “Really!” I said, astonished.
    I followed him into the living room and burst out laughing.  There in the large empty corner reserved for my 7 foot tree was the small 3 foot tree I use to decorate the front porch.  It was another wonderful Christmas tree memory.