Birch Trees

The birch trees crowded around her like well-wishers. The birch trees of her mother's Russia. She had never seen the birch trees, except through her mother's words, and her mother had spoken of them often. Of their fair complexion and stately processional through the woods. Their dolorous eyes. The way they comforted and surrounded her and held her together during whole years she thought her heart had withered. And now, she could see them so clearly. Now that the end was near for her, there was nothing to do but wander the woods, while her own daughter talked in muffled urgency with a voice she could only assume was the doctor's.

She thought they talked away, in the hall, to prevent bad news from filtering through to her. But this time, she heard the doctor say, as plain as sunlight, "... not out of the woods yet." He was right. There she was, amid the birch trees of her mother's Russia. She was hidden away there, not out of the woods yet. No hint of the world beyond. She was enfolded in a world of trees. Songbirds sang almost out of earshot, like her daughter and the doctor.

A kindly old Grandmother leaned down, her silver trunk gray-haired and creaky, and said to her, "You're not out of the woods yet, my dear. Everything is fine. Rest a while." So she rested. Rested in the arms of the birch trees of her mother's Russia. From somewhere—she thought it was the west, but the forest confounded all her senses (was there a west anymore?)—her daughter's voice came to her in the form of a songbird.

"Is there anything I can get you, Mama?" Her daughter's voice here, in the forest. No, nothing. A blanket maybe. And with that, she slipped deeper into the birch forest, borne on the wind, a glossy birch leaf. Her daughter stood with the doctor and put her hand on her mother's cheek. The doctor said, "Would you like a few minutes alone with her?"