Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t control the outcome. That is the spoiler alert moral to this story. I have four trees in the backyard. I planted five trees when my husband Erik died 2 years ago. And then I planted them again.

Shortly before his death, we had walked through a garden nursery together and Erik pointed to the trees we would plant by the fence in the spring. He had been giddy about designing our backyard living space. He did not spend another spring with me.

But I bought his trees after his winter death, and I hired a landscape fella to plant the five trees along our fence line. One tree for each of us. The Setterlind 5 forever! We even poured some of his ashes in the tree holes and added a plaque to one entitled “Dad’s Tree.”

I felt good about DOING SOMETHING tangible to honor Erik. I had been spinning in circles at the time trying to figure out the right thing to do for everyone’s grief and now we had trees! I would walk out to “Dad’s Tree” and talk to it at night. I still do.

I told it how awful prom dress shopping turned out for my self-esteem. I would explain the highlights of a sporting event or ask what the password was to Hulu. Sometimes I yelled at that tree for causing our 3 children so much pain with his suicide. I am sure the neighbors were concerned at the sight of me pacing the yard in my pajamas while talking to a tree.

So, the 5 trees sat there in the boiling summer sun that first year while I was busy talking, yelling, crying, and cussing them out. I finally called the landscape fella and asked why the trees were brown and he asked if I watered them.

To most normal people, this would have been one of those Captain Obvious moments. No, I did not water the trees. I was talking to them. And in my defense, he never told me they might need water.

At the time, I couldn’t even get to my office without using my maps app because my brain was so fried from basic functioning that there was absolutely no way I had the capacity to water the freaking trees.

He graciously came back and replanted two for me. He passive aggressively reminded me of the life cycle of plants and said water would be ideal “this time around.” So, I watered them.  I watered all of them consistently and 4 of them came back to life.

The fifth one didn’t. The tree was completely dead again. I gave up and now we have only 4 trees.  Nothing will grow in that 5^th spot. It just sits there empty and brown and probably is on top of a sink hole we will find out about later.

It is a visual reminder for me that there are only 4 of us growing now. We aren’t a family of 5 anymore. I can only live with 4 trees and let the earth hold it’s space for the missing one. How ironic and sad is that?

Nothing will grow there. All I can do is keep watering the 4 trees that remain.  I can believe in their resilience and fortitude to keep growing despite the unpredictable circumstances of life in my yard.  

Sometimes we lose partners. We lose friends. We lose pets. We lose jobs. And we must recalibrate how to keep growing and thriving when things don’t look like we planned.

Sometimes you just cannot have 5 trees. You can do everything right and still not reap what you planted. We can’t control the outcome in most life scenarios. We have to call out “pivot” like Ross taught us in the couch episode of Friends. Acceptance of this fact has been my ongoing self-work.

The 4 trees are a lovely reminder that all is not lost. I can focus on the empty spot sometimes and feel that bottomless painful pit of aloneness. And then I can turn towards the 4 thriving green trees and remember to water them.