THIS EASTER OF DOGWOOD JOY [View all]

[Samantha]

Last edited Sun Apr 20, 2014, 05:46 PM - Edit history (4)

I think a lot of my father who passed suddenly without warning. He passed in the middle of the night, suffering a massive heart attack. He was only 50 years old, so as you can imagine, this loss impacted his family pretty hard.

His first wife, my mother, also died of a heart attack in the middle of the night. She was only 28 years old and left behind four young children. The oldest child was seven years old, the youngest was nine months. She was a beautiful, loving woman, a joy to her family and friends.

To his credit, this 28 year-old man made many sacrifices to keep his family together. It was extremely difficult because he had a low-paying job in Knoxville, Tennessee, working as a milk man. He did not make enough following the loss of my mother to pay for child care while he worked his job. Many in the family suggested he had no other choice but to put us in foster homes or adopt us out. This he steadfastly refused to do. As our only surviving parent, my father became our everything.

And so we all moved in with my grandparents, where we stayed until my father remarried a couple of years later. He moved his new wife and his four children from Tennessee to the DC metropolitan area. And here we have lived for decades. I have looked back on those early years and thought not too many people would have had the determination my father had in protecting the unity of his family while still grieving over the loss of the woman he loved and the mother of his four children. But he persevered and made it work. These words are written to explain why he was so important to us.

Five years ago, thinking about the sacrifices he had made for me I wanted to pay a small tribute to him. He loved many things, but one thing he often mentioned was how beautiful the dogwood trees in Tennessee were and he missed seeing them in this area. I decided to plant a dogwood tree in my father’s memory. I ordered just a very small twig-like dogwood tree from a nursery in Tennessee. I had no gardening skills under my belt, and so I thought I should start out small and keep my expectations low for success.

When the little tree arrived, I dug a reasonably sized hole, planted the tree, fertilized it, and put beautiful reddish mulch around it. I surrounded the mulch with decorative bricks. I tended it everyday, checking its progress. It started to take root and grow. I named it My Daddy Dogwood tree.

The next year, it was gaining height and looking healthy. Then disaster struck. My next door neighbor’s little son lost control of his bike and ran my little tree down. It was broken near the base. I was devastated. Two of my neighbors knowing the sentimental value of the tree to me came over and patched the tree back together. They told me it had only a small possibility of survival.

Each year I have tended to the tree with care. It sprouted another trunk at the point where the base had been severely severed, and from that trunk grew a mid-size tree. But it never bloomed. I had resigned myself to accepting this was the way it would be.

Until today. On this Easter, I discovered from my window five little blooms on my Daddy Dogwood tree. I ran out and looked the tree over carefully, and there are more blooms at the top. I cried when I saw them. The blooms are white with pink edges.

Happy Easter, Dad. Your dogwood tree is beautifully in bloom.

Sam