I grew up in Bloomfield Connecticut until I graduated from high school, then attended college and got a job.

My parents continued on in Bloomfield.

We lived at the end of a dead-end road in a very nice setting. Our front yard was a modest size. Our back yard was enormous. There was room to play all kinds of games. In the back of the yard, centered, was a large willow tree -- a weeping willow. Its shade was most welcome during the hot summer months. Alone among all the other trees, it stood the tallest and the straightest, and indeed, if I can ascribe human traits to it, the proudest.

In February of one year, my father died unexpectedly of a heart attack. He was only sixty years and nine months old. It was an incredibly difficult time, but the winter finally led to spring, and spring led to summer. One night, my mother called me to say that there had  been a lightning storm, and with one mighty bolt, the willow tree had been struck and cut into pieces – destroyed. Weeks later, we cleared it out.

It was as if the tree had mirrored the life of my father; now that he was gone, the tree was ready to give itself up to nature. In the days and years that followed, whenever I looked out into the backyard, expecting to see the tree, its absence was glaring. It was a constant and vivid reminder that, like my father, the tree was no longer a part of this earth.