The paperbark tree

She was 92 years old.
Ancient.
And look....
.....I'm not trying to be uncharitable here but she was...
.....you know, old and frail....
I mean, physically she seemed alright but mentally....?
Naw. Forget it.
She wasn't all there....
....lights on, nobody home.
I don't think 'eccentric' would quite cover it....you know?
Personally, I think there was the onset of something....
Anyway, she kept on repeating herself....
....saying the same things over and over again.
I saw this happen with my own Grandmother.....
Alzheimer's.
Then again...
...what do I know?
That morning was the first time I'd ever met the woman.
Anyway, she made us all a cup of tea
...she insisted we have one.
Such a horrible morning to be working outside
.....she kept saying.
Okay, fine, so we had a cup of tea...
...with stale biscuits that had probably been sitting in the cupboard for a decade.
I don't even drink tea but when someone of her age makes the effort to be hospitable....
....well, you just accept the hospitality, don't you?
You don't really have a choice in the matter.
Anyway, there was a fungus in her back tree.
The paperbark...
....a huge tree
.....and it was rotten with that shit.
The fungus had gone right through it....
......had completely compromised the integrity of the tree.
So it was only a matter of time.
Eventually, it would have come down.
Her son had taken a sample along to the university....
....to test the fungus....
....because that's what they do out there....
....they have a special department devoted to fungus.
Or is it fungi?...plural......I don't know.....
Anyway, the big storm that came through on the weekend....
.....it beat us to it.
The storm pulled the tree down
.....yanking up a huge section of earth and smashing the neighbour's fence in the process.
I'll tell you....the neighbours were lucky it didn't come down on their house.
Or worse.
The point is, it was a complete mess....
And after the insurance company did their bit...
....we turned up....
...at 7 am this morning....the rain still coming down...power outages all over the city.....
....and do you think for one minute that our truck was going to fit down the side of her house?
....down that tiny little driveway?
Yeah right....
....not a chance.
So with this in mind, we knew it was going to be a long day.
Basically, we had to cut the tree up with chainsaws....
...then drag everything up the driveway.
Finally, we had to chip all the limbs and branches on the street....
At least that was the plan.
The thing was....
....45 minutes after starting, we found a skeleton, poking out of the mud.
It was all tangled up in the exposed roots and mud.
When the tree toppled over, it sucked this skeleton up out of the ground.
We didn't see it at first....
...not until our excavator blade cut it in half....
....at the pelvis.
Not that the remains were in one piece...
....the skeleton had been in the ground for a long time.
Really all that was left was a pile of dirty bones and rags.
I told the boys to stop work immediately.
Of course...
....and the old lady?
....she was watching from the kitchen window.
It all came out that dark afternoon....60 years after the fact.....
......56 years to be exact.
She'd had 56 years of freedom.
56 years of walking around....free as a bird
....with her first husband buried out in the back garden.
Next to the Paperbark tree....
...the roots slowly creeping through the earth....
.....paperbacks have very invasive root systems....
....they'll get into your plumbing, they will cause endless problems....
Anyway, for 56 years the roots of that tree were coiling around him down in the soil.....
...this husband of hers who had supposedly gone out for a pack of smokes one night....
...back in 1961
....and who never came back.
That was the story she told everyone.
It was feasible enough.
People do disappear.
For some people, it's easier to walk out the front door and never come back...
.....a clean break.
Anyway, she remarried....
....had children with another man....
....and then had grandchildren....
.....all the while, the first husband was buried out back...
....and she did it.
.....with a little hammer.
...you know those tiny little hammers? That people use for crafts projects and for tacking together picture frames?
The kind you use for hammering in tiny little nails not much bigger than a pin?
....one of those.
Anyway, one night, in 1961, they had an argument....
....she walked out of the room
....and she came back in 2 minutes later.
He was still sitting there, king of his castle, in his chair, with his back to the door.
He probably didn't know what hit him...
....he had a newspaper in his lap...
...and bang!
The daily news was suddenly covered in a fine spray of blood.
It came out that he tried to stand up, slumped back down, into his chair before shouting, 'what are we doing?'
Shock, I guess.
The damaged brain going haywire.
....anyway, then she finished him off.
It took a while....
.....such a small hammer.
.....you know why she did it?
......he'd smashed one of her porcelain figurines.
That was it.
He knocked it over....
....when he was drunk
....he didn't apologise
.....or wouldn't apologise.
Apparently.
You know these things are....in a marriage.
It probably had very little to do with the figurine.
In a marriage, little things always become symbolic of bigger things.
Symptomatic.
Then again, maybe it had everything to do with the figurine....
.....one thing is for sure....
.....after she put him in the ground....
.....and after she realised she was going to get away with it...
....after she convinced everyone that he'd probably run off with his secret girlfriend....
....she had a really good life.
She made the most of her time....
.....had a career....
.....travelled....holidays....
......outlived her second husband by 10 years....
......attended church regularly....
......got involved in charity work....
......became a loving grandmother....
......the whole bit.
Anyway, on this dark wet morning that I'm talking about, two days after the storm hit....
......the cops showed up, lights flashing.
They talked to her in her kitchen...
.....the cups of tea and biscuits came out....
....all that business....
.....and she told them all about the hammer....
....no prompting required.
She basically confessed right then and there...
....said she had probably led a better life because of what happened.
That she appreciated things all the more....
....when you understand your freedom, what it's worth....
....when you realise you could be on borrowed time....
.....well....
......let's just say, she used her time wisely.
She savoured it.
Her daughter showed up in a state of shock....
...angry as hell.
How can you treat my grandmother like this?
Etc, etc....
The old lady had pretty much forgotten what she had told the cops by that point.
She didn't understand what all the fuss was about.
The cops took her away.
No handcuffs required.
She wasn't going to be a threat to anyone.
Of course, the site became a crime scene....
....police tape and forensic people....
.....we couldn't touch anything.
We packed up.....
I called the office....
We moved on to the next tree.