I duck under the branches of a tree that grew in my life time, finding myself embraced in the dappled light of my past and present realities. Then the growl of the storm, the crack of the limbs, the violence all tearing at my soul as my tree starts to disappear. In the evening, silence. I went outside. My tree still stood its lower branches were gone, but the central limbs remained like fireworks bursting into a joy of greenness. In the space once crowded with leaves, there was something new. A new plant, almost unseen were at last breathing the sunshine. My tree was not gone, but reimagined. I gazed at all this beauty, feeling my grief arrive at gratitude.