For as long as I could remember I had been frightened of the tree in our back yard.

In the spring it would explode into life, sprouting bone white blossoms that exuded the suffocating smell of death.

In summer it’s full branches seemed as if they were looming over the entire yard, leaving me with the feeling of being trapped or caged.

In the fall it shrouded itself in leaves the color of blood. They would rain down to the ground and leave behind a lingering carpet of decay.

In the winter it would tap..tap..tap..it’s bony fingers on the side of the house, I would watch from my bed underneath the window as it cast shadows, like skeletal hands that always seemed to be reaching for me.

Then one early spring, a storm rolled through. I watched the swaying branches and the horrible tree as I lay frightened in my bed. I closed my eyes and I wished with all my heart that it would just disappear.

I saw the flash of blinding light through my eyelids, I felt the concussive BOOM a moment later. and I knew, I didn’t have to be afraid anymore.

I stood where the tree had been the next day.

I felt happy, as the men in the yard began cutting up that terrible old tree, removing pieces of the huge trunk that had fallen on our house.

And I watched, with a little sadness, as my mother stood in the doorway of what had once been my bedroom, weeping.