If a Tree Falls in the Forest

Words left behind about being left behind. A project neglected about feeling neglected. The irony isn't lost. 

If a tree falls in a forest and noone is around to hear the slow leaning, roots slowly uprooting, the fight to stay upright, in vain, the last strain as it falls with a deep thud... noone questions whether the tree fell. They only question if it affected the ears of others.

I received a message today at 6 am from someone I've never met. I was half awake. I was hardly awake. But he told me the words I wrote 9 years ago still make a sound. It was alarming to hear it. I mean it was alarming to read it, quietly appearing there in my inbox while the sun was sneaking into my bedroom, but it sounded like an alarm. 

If a tree fell in the woods that grows at the back of my house, limbs overburdened by the heavy snow that has fallen and fallen and fallen this winter, would I hear it? Would I remember the sound years from now?

The truth is, for the most part, I am so deeply rooted in this life without him, that it is even hard to remember the way life was when it was with him. The truth is that I now struggle to remember his face, his hands, how tall he was, the feeling of his arms around me, if we laughed a lot together, or if we said "I love you" often, or at all. The truth is I hardly look at his photos, I hardly listen to his voice in the handful of videos I have that I hardly know I hold onto. The truth is it has been me and the three kids for so long that there is hardly any longing.

But that is so alarming. 

Because if a tree fell in the forest, even today, in the woods that grows at the back of my house, even if it did make a sound, even if I was around to hear it, and mourned it, and I myself fell to the ground and moaned about its falling, how much would I still remember the sound, 10 years later? And if I don't remember the sound of it falling, is that my failing, or just a falling?