Hello everyone.... I don't know if this really qualifies as a "Forum Topic", and I know many would say "it was only a tree", but when for any reason one is feeling grief stricken sharing, or eulogizing, does help to soothe the pain of ones loss, and is enormously therapeutic....

I lost you, my old friend, a few days ago. For thirty-five years we together unfailingly marked the glorious changing of the seasons, and you kindly shaded the backside of my building during the heat of many a summer. You were the picture of health towering seventy feet high, about the same age as me (85) from what I have been told. Numberless generations of squirrels and birds had called you home. So many happy memories.... the squirrels scurrying and leaping about.... the raccoons and possums that once found rest among your inviting branches.... all the birds nests that erupted with the delightful chorus of baby birds each year.... and all the fascinatingly intricate freshly spun spider webs, glistening with morning dew, among your limbs in the light of the rising sun! I loved you so very, very much.... Oh! My dear beloved old Mapple Tree, how I wish I could have saved you!

You my old friend.... who brought such joy into my life, and the lives of so many others for so many years.... are gone. Fare thee well!