May 31st, 2026
I know that a surefire way to experience heartbreak in this life is to have attachments; this hard-earned knowledge hasn’t stopped me from keeping my mom in a ceramic squirrel cookie jar.
A beautiful, diseased tree that lived behind our home was cut down on Friday. Its branches held a dray that housed a sibling gang of squirrels; I counted seven of them one morning last week as they squeaked and leaped about our yard. I noticed that they had been moving pieces of their nest from one tree to another, like they knew the end of their stay in the former was near.
What a lesson from nature, I thought. Change is normal. Moving on is normal, totally not a big deal. The tree you live in right now is only the tree you live in right now; you will live in many trees and someday you won’t live in a tree at all.
Our beautiful, diseased tree fell and that was that. There was a quiet sadness sat in our yard, grief in the form of a stump. The absence of the tree deeply upset me, but I felt silly, as the squirrels were so easily able to get past it.
Until we heard it.
A wail of sorts. I thought it was a bird. But I looked outside and it was one of the squirrels, splooting over a branch in the new tree, seemingly crying out in pain, though not in any visible, physical danger.
Maybe it is possible to be okay with all change. Maybe it just takes practice. Or maybe it’s a trick taught by nature: act unaffected and unattached, pretend to be cool with change or get buried by it.
It’s my mom’s birthday today and I wish she were here to help me let that squirrel know it’s going to be okay; I wish she were here to let me know, too.
Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I woke up and my ceramic squirrel cookie jar was gone.
I think a part of me would be okay, knowing she was out there somewhere and living in another tree.
But I know another part of me would wail, the part of me that never stops, the part of me that holds on to all the birthdays we had before and all the birthdays we’ll never have.
The Den 