Profound loss has a way of never going away. Writer Amy Fleury moves through her grief on her family’s land, where she often thinks about her late son, her own mortality and the trees.
She shared a story, “Evergreen,” at a live storytelling event hosted by Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Wisconsin Life” and the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild. It was held on Nov. 14, 2024 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin at The Lakely.
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As Derek, my then-fiancé, drove us across the bridge at Hudson two days after Christmas, the piney woods we passed were etched against the gloaming sky. Once we crossed into Dunn County, I was delighted to approach, through the stands of Eastern White Pine, a picturesque farmstead with a cozy house that Derek’s late granddad had built himself, a red barn and a couple silos, all nestled in 450 acres of the family farm whose trees would become lumber.
In the freshness of morning, we bundled up and Derek led me by my mittened hand on some of the farm’s woodland trails, winter sun glistering through the branches. He loved this farm he’d been visiting since childhood, first to visit his grandparents, and then his own folks who had retired there. He shared with me that he hoped to call it home one day in the distant future too. He and his late wife Lisa had even chosen to be married in Menomonie. We hiked through old snow on what would have been their fifteenth wedding anniversary. When we came off the trail Derek showed me the maple under which Lisa’s ashes were buried.
We visited the farm once more before we were married and then it would be over three years before we could return. We were blessed with a son, Graham, who lived and died in a pediatric hospital in Texas, and that kept us away. Three months after our boy died, Derek’s 99-year-old grandma returned to the farm to make her transition as well. It was December again and pine boughs garlanded the mantle.
Amy Fleury at her family’s farm in Dunn County, Wisconsin. She stands in front of Graham’s Grove, in honor of her late son. Photo courtesy of Amy Fleury
Seven years later we sold our house and made the move north, exchanging the live oaks, magnolias and hurricanes of the Gulf Coast for the pines and white oaks of Wisconsin. We wanted to be closer to family and to learn how to care for the tree farm from Derek’s folks as we would one day be stewards of it.
The only piece of real estate we now own is a plot in Lake Menomin’s Evergreen Cemetery. It’s listed on the National Historic Register and the resting place of lumber barons and mill workers alike. We purchased it in the zombified days of early grief, a time when I felt simultaneously skinless and numb after the death of our two-and-a-half-year-old son. It’s when I had not yet realized it would be acceptable to keep Graham’s urn near us, that we need not yet abandon it under the pine needles and snow.
A truth that dazzled me gradually was that there would be no one to visit our grave, no one would bring plastic flowers or place a stone on our marker or clear the weeds or moss from our names. At best someone might pass by and wonder at the curious configuration of our dates and epitaph, an almost pioneer-like starkness with the early death of a first wife, a mid-life marriage, and the loss of a young child.
Perhaps the better course in the end is for our ashes to be sifted together, a bone meal supplying nitrogen, calcium and phosphorous, spread to nourish a mighty pine or many. Some brisk morning a family might walk among those trees, their steps releasing the scent of leaf rot and resin. May their joy in existing together in this place be evergreen.
Writer and poet Amy Fleury of Eau Claire, Wisconsin shares the story “Evergreen” on stage at The Lakely in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on Nov. 14, 2024. The storytelling event was hosted by WPR’s “Wisconsin Life” and the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild. Rich Kremer/WPR
After poet and writer Amy Fleury shared her story live on stage at The Lakely, event cohost B.J. Hollars talked with her about the essay.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
B.J. Hollars: I love when poets write essays because it hits me in a whole new way. I’m just wondering if you can share a bit about why this was the piece you wanted to share with us tonight.
Amy Fleury: Well, I always loved this quote from Willa Cather. It’s how wonderful it is “to be absorbed into something so complete and great.”
I was really thinking about moving to Wisconsin and being accepted into Derek’s family as a middle-aged woman being married for the first time. So being accepted into a family, being accepted into the woodlands, which I adore here in Wisconsin. When we moved here to be accepted into such a warm community and thinking about not only the people, but the ecosystem that we’re surrounded with — the beautiful woodlands and the history of the woodlands in this part of the state.
So that’s I was really wanting to contemplate: mortality and trees.
Author B.J. Hollars, left, talks with writer Amy Fleury after she read her essay “Evergreen.” Fleury shares her story on stage at The Lakely on Nov. 14, 2024. Hollars co-hosted the event put on by WPR’s “Wisconsin Life” and the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild. Rich Kremer/WPR
To hear all the Chippewa Valley writers’ stories from the live storytelling event, check out the full collection at “Wisconsin Life” Live from the Chippewa Valley.
