By Wilson Koewing

I knew little about the child except that his grandmother was a 2^nd grade teacher at the elementary school I attended when I myself was a child so many years ago. I’d heard she was a disciplinarian, and I was happy then to be put in the class of the other 2^nd grade teacher. I only know any of this because my mother told me as we rode by their home in the rural Piedmont of South Carolina. I’d commented on the beauty of the yard and she mentioned who lived there. The yard was large and freshly mowed. The modest brick house had a front porch swing. Some distance away stood a massive oak that’s branches tendrilled so far out they almost reached the roof of the house. The child was buried under the tree. He was her grandson. He’d gotten pediatric cancer at the age of 4 and that’s how old he was when he died. St. Jude’s couldn’t save him. It had been the child’s request to be buried under the tree. I don’t know why the child requested this, but I can easily guess he liked to play in the shade of the oak during the brutal, humid South Carolina summers. The leaves on the trees and the grass seem greener in South Carolina especially on endless summer days without clouds where you come to understand the term “Carolina Blue.” For whatever reason the sky never appears bluer anywhere in the world than in South Carolina. It was told to me, or perhaps I said it myself, that no story can possess beauty unless it first acknowledges the inherent sadness in all of our existences. Then it can be beautiful. Beautiful like the child must have believed the shade under the oak to be. I imagine him under that tree, though I don’t know what he looked like or even his name, pushing a yellow dump truck toy or blowing bubbles to chase. Marveling at insects crawling in the grass. Gazing across the expanse to the tops of other, distant trees, hoping to glimpse a hint of breeze. Aware, even though he had a very short life, of the beauty that can be held in a place. A home. A place he wanted some part of him to always be.

About the Author: Wilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina. His work is forthcoming in Gargoyle, Wigleaf and Hobart.