Fallen Trees & Unexpected Grief

Change & How It Never Comes Quietly…

Content Note: grief, loss of meaningful places, reflections on childhood and family history.

At the time I’m finishing this post, it’s now Saturday morning.

And it’s snowing.

Which feels a little like the weather’s way of saying this whole situation wasn’t quite finished with us yet.

Cleanup is still ongoing, the yard still looks unfamiliar, and the spoons I had left for the weekend were already pretty limited.

Snow was… not exactly on the wishlist.

But here we are.

Welcome Back to the Cryptid’s Den

Come in.

You can set things down here.

This is The Crippled Cryptid.

A quiet corner of the internet where disabled lives are allowed to be complicated, unpretty, and deeply loved.

I’m Sky.

Professional cryptid. Accidental cyborg.
Occasional author, chronic illness and disability advocate.

Someone who lives in a body with opinions and a service dog named Luna who enforces rest with alarming efficiency.

Luna is part guardian, part shadow, part “hey, you don’t get to ignore that.”

M&M is my constant. My best friend. The one who holds the world steady when I can’t.

This space exists for the days when survival is the whole task.

For love that shows up even when everything hurts.

For telling the truth without turning it into a performance.

If you’ve been here before, I’m glad you came back.

If this is your first time, you’re welcome here.

The Lunatic Café is open.

On today’s menu: Fallen Trees & Unexpected Grief.

A Life Rooted in One Place

Today’s post is a little heavier than usual.

There’s a lot of feeling wrapped up in it. Some grief I didn’t expect.

If you didn’t know this about me, I’ve lived in this house my entire life.

Literally.

For that, I can honestly call myself lucky. Because some people don’t have that luxury.

Some people move around a lot for whatever the reason, for me… I’ve always just lived here. Meaning when things change… I take notice.

When I was little, my grandparents adopted me because my mother didn’t always know how to put her children first. That’s a story for another time. I’m not saying she didn’t love me. Just that sometimes people love you and still don’t know how to make the best decisions.

Life is complicated like that.

My father wasn’t in the picture. We didn’t really know who he was.

And if you’ve been following my recent journey of accidental family archaeology, you know that after taking an Ancestry DNA test… I might actually know now.

The strange part?

It’s not who anyone thought it was. Not even close.

I’m not sharing names yet. That story is still unfolding. But I can say that we’ve started getting to know each other, and honestly? That’s been pretty incredible.

Life has a strange sense of timing sometimes.

If you want to know more about that story, I’ll leave that post linked here.

Which brings us to Friday the 13th.

The Morning Something Felt Off

When I woke up that morning, something felt… wrong.

Not in a spooky superstition kind of way. Just in that quiet gut-feeling way.

The migraine that had been building for days was still there. No surprise.

The weather in Illinois has been whacky to say the least.

So, I did what I always do.

Took my Nurtec.
Made coffee.
Started the morning the way you’d expect.

Then I went looking for the Yard Yeti.

My little brother BJ.

I wanted to ask if there was anything special he wanted me to order from Instacart since we’re still down a car after someone crashed into us back in October.

Instead, I found the garage open.

No BJ. Weird.

So, Luna and I went to investigate.

And I have to give Luna a gold star here.

She was off leash, recall trained, and fully aware that something unusual was happening in the yard.

But she didn’t run toward BJ.

She didn’t run toward the fallen tree.

She didn’t investigate the debris pile like a curious gremlin.

She stayed with me.

Exactly where she was supposed to be.

Luna Bean understood the assignment.

And then we saw it.

The tree in the front yard had fallen.

And I think my brain short-circuited a little bit.

The Scene in Real Time

Before I even had time to process it, BJ had already been out there documenting the situation like the responsible Yard Yeti that he is. He was also already trying to clean up.

He sent me pictures from the road while Luna and I were still trying to wrap our heads around what we were seeing.

It looked surreal.

Like someone had taken a piece of the yard and just… laid it across the street.

But I still went out and took a few pictures myself.

Part of me needed to see the wreckage with my own eyes. The way you need to see what’s left after a car accident or a house fire, so you really… truly know.

At that point the Yard Yeti was already working on figuring out how to start clearing it safely.

Yes, he’s standing on it.

Yes, he was being careful.

Yes, I did tell him not to break anything because I cannot handle two emergencies in one morning.

The Yard Yeti has declared the situation “manageable.”

Which is Yard Yeti for: this is going to take all day.

More than that actually, because as it turned out our chainsaw didn’t want to cooperate. The blade is dull. And my brother Matthew won’t be able to drop off his until sometime on Sunday.

But my maybe-father offered his help on Friday while we were laying in bed trying to destress watching Friday the 13th.

The fact that he texted to make sure everything was alright meant a lot to me.

Sometimes support shows up in unexpected ways too.

And if you live with chronic illness, you probably already know what I was thinking next.

This whole situation was about to eat a lot of my already limited spoons for the weekend.

Emergencies don’t ask if your body has the capacity for them.

They just show up and expect you to deal with them anyway.

And now, with the snow falling outside while we’re still trying to finish cleanup, those spoons are even lower than they were yesterday.

The Tree That Was Always There

That pine tree had been there my entire life.

I remember hanging things in it as a kid.

Silicone clown heads.
Zombie heads.
Ridiculous Halloween decorations.

One year we had a birdhouse that looked like the Green Man hanging from its branches.

Thankfully, the Yard Yeti managed to recover it this morning. And yes… it survived.

Other years we’d tack a carved face right into the trunk for Halloween.

Every year mushrooms would grow around the base.

I played under that tree when I was little.

It was part of the landscape of my childhood. The background scenery of hundreds of small memories.

I rode my bike around that tree.

Ran around it.

Built entire fantasy worlds around it in my head.

Bear loved that tree when he was alive.

Luna knew that tree.

Even Rex loved that tree. When we were in the front yard, you could often find him sitting under it watching me play.

And now it’s gone.

Reduced to a strange pile of chaos and rubble that’s making itself inconveniently difficult to clean up.

It’s strange looking at the yard now.

The skyline of the place I grew up in has changed.

And I didn’t realize how much comfort I took from seeing those trees every day until one of them wasn’t there anymore.

It feels bigger out there now.

But not in a good way.

More like a missing tooth in a smile you’ve known your entire life.

But there is no veneer and no implant you can get for a 45+ year old tree that has been there longer than your family has owned the land.

The Way Landmarks Become Part of Us

The tree fell into the road, thankfully not into the garage or the house.

In the process it hit the tree next to it. Our Elephant Ear Tree. The Northern Catalpa with the giant leaves that look like something prehistoric.

BJ is still working on removing the fallen pine and untangling it from the catalpa.

The catalpa might survive.

It’s younger. It might rebound.

We planted it around 2007, so it has a fighting chance.

But the truth is it will probably never look quite the same again.

Standing in the yard looking at the empty space where that pine used to be hit me harder than I expected.

Because to some people, it’s just a tree.

But to me?

It was a landmark.

When you turned onto my street, you could always find my house.

The tan house with the three pine trees out front.

Earlier this year the first pine came down after a storm. That one we knew was dying.

So, it didn’t hurt nearly as much, despite feeling like a jumpscare every time I looked outside.

It had started leaning. The needles weren’t growing anymore.

It was its time.

The second one came down not long after because we were worried the same thing might happen again.

But this last pine?

It looked healthy.

Thick bark. Beautiful needles. Strong.

Even looking at it from underneath the roots after it fell, you could tell that the tree itself is healthy and alive. No obvious signs of rot or sickness.

And yet when the 55–60+ MPH winds rolled through early Friday morning, the kind that make the whole house creak if you’re awake to hear them, it just couldn’t hold on.

Sometimes even strong things break.

A lesson I think we all need to remember.

Sometimes, storms make trees take deeper roots.

Sometimes even strong things break.

The Quiet Grief of Losing Familiar Things

Of course I’m grateful it didn’t hit the house. I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful, or that I’m complaining.

Or the garage.

Or anyone else’s property.

But there’s a strange kind of grief that comes with living somewhere your entire life and watching pieces of that landscape disappear.

Trees you grew up with.

Trees that watched you grow up.

They become part of the mental map of your world.

And when they’re gone, the yard suddenly looks unfamiliar.

I know I can plant new trees.

And I probably will.

I’ve been talking about landscaping for years.

This just… isn’t how I imagined starting.

I planned on new flowers in the flower bed that lines the driveway, not ripping all of the trees from the yard.

I guess sometimes the universe does landscaping whether you asked for it or not.

Not Everyone Experiences Change the Same Way

I also want to say something important here.

Because to me, and the people I love, this feels vital.

The way I feel about this isn’t the only valid way to experience change.

Some people moved around a lot growing up. Some people never had the chance to build long relationships with places, trees, houses, or neighborhoods.

For them, something like this might not feel like a loss at all.

And that’s okay.

But sometimes the opposite is also true.

Sometimes people who moved around a lot feel these changes even more deeply, because stable places were rare.

M&M grew up moving around quite a bit.

And even though she’s been part of my life for twenty-one years now, I know that things like this hit her hard too.

Because when you finally do build roots somewhere, the things that grow around you start to matter.

Sometimes they start to matter so much they feel like part of the family.

Trees.
Landmarks.
The shape of the yard.
The quiet familiarity of knowing exactly what the world outside your door looks like.

So, if this kind of loss feels small to you, that’s okay.

And if it feels big?

That’s okay too.

Grief doesn’t check ID before it shows up.

Planting What Comes Next

Now that the space is open, I’ve been thinking about what could grow there next.

Because sometimes the only thing you can do after losing something old… is decide what deserves to grow there next. Not allow grief to fester.

I just can’t let myself think of that space as empty for too long without wanting to cry.

So, instead I’m thinking about what might belong there someday.

One idea I keep coming back to is a sugar maple.

They’re beautiful. They grow strong. They provide incredible shade.

And the idea of tapping a tree in my own yard and making maple syrup someday?

That feels kind of magical.

It’s also a little callback to my Quebec roots, and my dream of someday visiting a real Canadian sugar shack.

The other tree I’ve wanted for years is an apple tree.

Specifically, a Granny Smith.

We have the climate for it here in northern Illinois, and everyone in this house loves them.

I love baking.

Apples mean pies, crisps, fritters, and muffins. Learning how to make apple sauce, apple butter, and apple juice.

But more than that, fruit trees feel communal.

If we had more apples than we could use, I’d happily share them with neighbors.

Or donate extras to the local food bank.

There’s something really beautiful about planting something that feeds people.

A Question for You

So, I’m curious.

Have you ever lost something that seemed small to everyone else, but felt big to you?

A place.
A tree.
A building.
Something tied to memory.

Do you think these feelings are valid?

And if you’re local to northern Illinois, do you have any favorite trees you’d plant in a yard like this?

I’m open to ideas.

And if you have a favorite tree story, I’d love to hear it too.

Tell me about the tree you climbed as a kid.
The one outside your childhood window.
The one that marked the corner of your world.

Before You Go

The yard looks different now.

But someday something new will grow there.

If today felt heavy, you didn’t carry it alone.

If today felt quiet, I hope it stayed gentle.

If you’re here, you belong here.

Love you. Now say it back.

-Sky
© The Crippled Cryptid
Disability, honesty, and a little chaos.

🔗 https://linktr.ee/skylanarissa

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