Pinetrees and Memories

The sun was setting in the sky, casting a reddish hue to the clouds and bringing a sigh to Maria's lips as she stared out of her bedroom window. It seemed that her life was sinking faster than the setting sun, falling deep into the very bowels of depression. A happy moment had a tendency to turn sour quickly, degenerating as quickly as milk and cheese left out to dry.

For most of her childhood she grew up in her father's house, walking with him in the woods behind the house, and planting pine trees together, nurturing them daily with a good dose of water. A year ago she had been at his funeral, the whole world suddenly seeming to lose it's light, and she felt her control slip. This was the last person she had left to help her keep a good grip on the icy ledge she called her emotions, the last one who truly understood how she felt.

Now he was gone, and she was left with the deed to her father’s house, to stare at the now grown pine trees and allow the grief to slowly swallow her emotions, piece by anguishing piece. She often sat in his favorite chair, an overstuffed leather armchair that her mother had bought him before she had died from her rare withering disease.
Sighing once more, she stood from her seat at the window and headed down the stairs and out the door, walking across the yard, the grass tickling her bare feet with their light caress, and sat on the ground before the little grove of pine trees she and her father had planted when she was young. There were three, one for her father, one for her, and one in memory of her mother.

She sat with her knees tucked beneath her chin, her arms tightly wrapped around them as if she were sitting in the midst of an arctic wind. The pine trees had grown tall and beautiful, their limbs stretching to the heavens in an open embrace, and their leaves were the golden green of the on setting of autumn. The branches waved slightly in the wind, scattering a few leaves that went floating to the ground just a few inches from Maria's feet.

She looked over at the leaves and noticed something that she had not seen before: there was a small tree there, an offspring of the pine trees, its little branches stretching to their furthest, a mere few inches, but already proudly sprouting green leaves, almost glowing, though there were few rays of sun left to them.

She looked up and allowed a smile to cross her face; her father had suggested they plant the trees long ago after her mother had died to symbolize that though they would always remember her, they would start new lives together, to grow more, and to live on in her memory. If she knew her father, he was somewhere in the great clouds of heaven, shaking his head at her for allowing herself to be engulfed by her sadness. Perhaps now was the time to start a new life; perhaps it was time to allow life to move on, to grow in her parent’s memory.

She smiled fully now, standing up and stretching lightly. The little pine tree stood proud against the light winds, and she turned towards the house, and her new life.