“In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured.” -Victor Frankl

Two grave stones nestled in between the surface roots of a crape myrtle caught my attention a week ago in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. I studied the stones and thought about that special relationship: the closeness and kinship of the journey in life continued with life everlasting, in eternal rest. So it seems that energy is never lost, it’s never quite at rest, or as Richard Powers writes (inspired by Ovid) that things don’t really die, they just become something else, and those insights spark ideas in my own mind as I contemplate the two stones amongst the roots. Life is entangled so closely like that. And we are closer to one another than we think, not growing next to but around those people we cherish most.

I wonder how long until the tree might swallow up the stones. Quietly, the root system of the crape myrtle grows, in tiny increments at a time. I am trying to reference the age of the tree from the stones, and I come up with twenty eight years, assuming that the crape myrtle was a memorial planting at the time of Bob’s passing. Judging by the size of the trunk and the surface roots, this seems feasible. Just now the buttress flares are about butting up to the edge of the headstones. They have even started to lift them slightly, a sixteenth, an eighth inch at a time, barely noticeable unless you could stare at the sandy soil for years at a time.

In another twenty eight years, perhaps the headstones will be gone, rolled over by the smooth, mottled bark of the surface roots. But Bob and Michael are still there, they are something else now: coursing through the vascular system of the trunk, always moving higher, further outward into the air, flowering year after year at the branch ends. And life will continue to breathe life.