The Story of the Woman Whose Son Died

               Every day she walked for hours, after her son died, in the nearby woods.   She had an unintelligible energy— too much to sit still, too much to focus, too little to do anything, at all.  So, she walked in the woods.  Some days, she would walk and end up lost in the woods.  She felt happy when she got lost for a moment.  For a moment, she would stop thinking of him.  Then, one day, she stood still, as did the woods, and she thought of the word or the term ‘lost’.  And she thought, on this still day, is anything ever lost?  Does anything really exist?  Did it ever exist?  I no longer possess it.  Can you ever possess anything?  Did I ever possess it?  Her heart ached, no longer thinking lost, but feeling lost.  Feeling every letter, and then his voice enters her heart ‘L’, his smile ‘O’, his touch ‘S’, the last moment she remembers seeing him ‘T’.  Her heart came so close to bursting, that day the woods stood still… she never got lost again.

                On another day, many many after the lost day, she found a place in the woods where rays of sunshine lit up the ground the largest.  She liked this spot very much, as most of the woods were shaded, but it was because of the immense shade that made this place so special.  She felt a deep peace here and found herself many days staring into the light.  This brought her a peace she rarely felt anymore.  She continued to visit this special place, and on a day quite similar to the lost day, she looked to sky as usual and then she sat.  She sat, stretched and looked around.  There in the shade of the taller trees, was one smaller tree.  To her, it appeared all the trees looked down onto this one tree in a mocking manner.   She felt a sudden rage come over her, here in here peaceful place, a rage that consumed her being.  She picked herself up and ran home in a blur.  She grabbed an axe determined to cut all the large trees down.  When she returned to her special place with the axe, she approached a large tree and as she swung the axe, a melancholy sensation ran through her.  She dropped the axe and began to howl in pain and cry.

                She passed out and awoke determined to care for the little tree.  Every day she carried water with a song on her heart, day in day out.  But time proved that this little tree appeared smaller or all the woods were growing higher around it.  She felt the rage again, but the pain to howl or cry had left her body and gone too, the energy to wield the axe.  At the moment of rage, or the moment she felt it was to emerge from her being, she looked upward and the sun caught her eye.  The calm returned.  Still determined to care for the tree, she returned daily with water, a song on her heart, but this time she brought mirrors to redirect the sunlight to the little tree.  She continued this daily journey until her little tree was the largest in the woods.