A tree.

I’ve been thinking…

There was a time when I was angry at the tree that ended my brother’s life.

A tree.

Something that doesn’t move, doesn’t choose, doesn’t decide.

It just grows. It provides shade, food, oxygen, homes for birds — all these quiet, passive contributions to the world. And still, for years, I held it responsible.

It took me a long time to understand why.

It was easier to be mad at something that stayed put than to face the truth that my brother’s car didn’t. His life didn’t. Everything changed in one moment, and the only thing still standing was the tree.

He lost control of his car — maybe he passed out, maybe he drifted, maybe something else entirely happened in those seconds none of us will ever get back. We can guess, but we’ll never know. What we do know is that the road went one way, he went another, and the tree… stayed exactly where it had always been.

Sometimes we get angry at the consequences because it hurts too much to look at the decisions — or circumstances — that put us there in the first place. Sometimes blame becomes a place to put grief when there’s nowhere else for it to go.

And that tree?

It’s still there. Still growing. Still just a tree.

Unchanged by the fact that my whole family’s life split open at its roots.

Grief is strange like that.

It makes villains out of things that were never capable of harm.

And eventually, it teaches you to look not at what stood in the way…

but at what was lost, what remains, and what keeps growing anyway.