In the Shelter of a Weeping Beech

In the Shelter of a Weeping Beech
By Jesse Wegman, Member of the Editorial Board
New York Times
December 25, 2023
[Editor’s Note from Mark Cohen: The author writes about a large, weeping beech tree that was his mother’s favorite and a ritual he developed to sit in the tree every year on the anniversary of her death and wait for his mother to join him.]

... I have no idea how long we spend there; time is hard to measure when you’re convening with the dead. Sometimes I tell her what happened over the last year—a marriage, a new job, a new kid, an illness, a news story she would have gasped at. I speak softly, but in a voice I remember. I address her as “Mom,” a word that defined my childhood but that I haven’t said out loud to anyone else for 14 years. And then, after this brief visit to the border between life and death, to the space between two worlds, I head back to work. It is as sacred a ritual as I have in my godless life ... This year, for the first time in 14 years, I forgot. There was no good excuse.