In memory of my father
On May 21, 2023 I owned a townhouse in Juneau, Alaska. I had spent much of the past few years commuting to Columbia, Missouri to care for my father and his home, usually staying a month at a time in Spring and Fall. On May 25th I arrived in Columbia, my father having passed away the day before. Traveling 2600 miles on such a short notice was not what happened here. It was a trip that was actually planned over a month previous. The irony of having just missed seeing my father does not escape me. At 97 his passing was no surprise, but he lived on his own till that day. It still breaks my heart that I was not there.
So it is that in mid-August my wife and I arrived to his old place to make a go of it. “Rachel’s Prairie” is now the prairie I own. As I sit amidst the tall grass looking over the pond, I must recognize the deep imprint of his life on the land I observe and the observer himself. Everywhere I look I see an aspect of my father that reflects his values. He loved this place. It has a randomness to it that seems totally counter to his otherwise need to control everything.
Interesting – just sitting there makes me think of him because that is what he did for decades – just sat there. I have reflexively thought to myself when I observe something that I will share it with him – but he is gone. He was always interested in the birds, the deer as they silently walk by, and the bats that feed at dusk. I sensed his sorrow that as he became too feeble to walk across the acreage, how he longed to be once again younger and stronger, to walk around the pond and down the wooded paths.
The place itself has his stamp upon it. It begins with the pond adjacent to the prairie, an half-acre structure he built as much for fishing as a water source. Living in the country, fresh water was not always a given. The well was shallow and had poor quality water. So he built this pond with a sand filter, connected to a pump house that treated the water. A few years later, public water would arrive.
The “prairie” was, at that time, a mixture of small trees, shrubs and a tangled mess of multi-floral rose bushes and blackberries. I recall as a kid of having to assist him in clearing out the two acres that would extend toward the pond. A couple years later, I was cutting the grass, transforming the area into a clean-cut yard. The trees above the pond were preserved and are today strong, full shade providers. I have acquainted myself to them: black hickory, pignut hickory, shaggy-bark hickory, persimmon, red cedar, scotch pine, white and shingle oak. When we started the prairie project, a thick mat of tall grass dotted with a wide array of field flowers emerged amongst those trees. Their appearance invited the insects that had long ago seemed to vanish. Their return signaled the arrival of bird species I had not observed in the past: flycatchers, warblers and vireos.
The funny thing about family is that you look back and you must acknowledge that it was not a pleasant experience. My dad was not an easy person to get along with. I did not enjoy working with him, yet it was something I had to do. This was particularly true when it came to collecting firewood. He had a 24 acre wood, so there was plenty of supply. I found some gratification that my work produced some positive result – it heated the house and my father was pleased with it. Yet what is peculiar about all these experiences is that they continued a few years back when he needed someone to help him. He did not ask for help, but it was clear he really wanted to stay in the house and continue to heat it with wood. So it was I returned twice a year and set up a system of cutting dead-standing timber. Believe it or not, he continued to split wood until his death! He was 97! He was using a hydraulic splitter, but I knew from experience that even that was not all that easy.
The other tradition that returned was my bi-annual burning of brush. Seemed like we were always burning brush around the house. But when you have a six acre yard, it adds up. I got into the habit of trimming his trees so that the limbs did not get into his eyes (he cut grass to the end). I would collect the limbs and stack them in a couple places on the periphery of the yard. And that tradition continues as I await the next wave of rain to dampen the ground before I burn brush.
Between the prairie and the house was where Dad had his garden and orchard. He was rather anal about his garden and did not care for me to be in it until I was in high school. Even Mom steered clear of it. But the orchard was all mine to do with it as I liked. It would be in that orchard I would experience the abundance of cherries, peaches, plums, pears and various sorts of apples. The plume de gras were the apricots! Yet as the years progressed the trees reached their full cycle and began to die off. He did not replace them but slowly cut them down. Only one pear tree remained, stubbornly refusing to die even though its main trunk was hollow. I have kept it to this day just to see how long it can continue. It is also fun to see the woodpeckers feast on his trunk and birds of various sorts nesting in his holes.
And reaching further in the past, I planted grapes. For some reason, Dad dropped the project. I can still remember eating the grapes off the vine as a five year old. He probably realized that at the rate I ate them he would never see any positive results. They would eventually disappear. He would pass away before the first small cluster appeared this past summer. As I bit into my first grape, I went back over sixty years in my life, looking to my left about twenty feet where the old grape vines once grew, seeing the little boy of five.
Two things of my father’s legacy will, unfortunately, be removed. Behind the house, over the old well, he planted a ring of shrubs that the extension agent said would grow about four feet. But the deciduous hollies morphed into a fifteen foot monster, encroaching over the years towards the house to such an extent that my Dad could no longer walk to the mailbox without going around the whole thing. Being he was using a cane, he granted my permission to trim back the bushes. I did so gradually over the years so he would not notice much of the change. The entire set of bushes were removed, most probably replaced by a flag-stoned patio and a finished landscape.
What I started to do two years ago was plant some fruit trees. I set them up on an irrigation system so that they would be watered during my absence. It was interesting how Dad would walk out to the garden I had developed, checking the grape vines and trees. He had some good suggestions, born from decades of experience. I could sense he very much enjoyed them. So it will be my desire in the years ahead to expand the orchard, to return it to the days of my youth, to see my grandkids getting sick on eating too many plums.
In the front of the house is this monstrous red cedar draped by bittersweet. There is a picture of me as a young boy standing next to a cedar tree about the height of my father. It seemed a bit out of place even then, a bit in the middle of things. Over time it extended and spread over the brick walkway, blocking much of the house. As with the hollies, he granted me permission to trim it back so he could more easily cut the grass around it. It will go both for aesthetic reasons as well as engineering. It’s roots elevated the ground so much it created a drainage problem around the house. So it will be replaced with a symmetric arrangement of two hardwoods that will eventually grow to provide shade to the south-exposure of the house.
Yet those two changes hurt. It was all him and it will be a part of him that will vanish. Gosh – it is the way of life – that the loved ones we have survived have left their imprint in us and in the places they inhabit – and we keep some of those things, yet some we must discard and move on.
© Copyright 2024 to Eric Niewoehner