This morning I was awoken by an unexpected phone call from home. My father’s voice on the other end speaking sentences that dropped like little stones into still water: "The storm last night. The old orange tree. A terrible crack. Yes, it's gone." I stood in the stillness of the kitchen for a long minute even after the call had ended. How strange, to feel this deep ache. It’s just a garden tree, after all. But there is something about this living being that breathed beside the door through all my seasons, its limbs reaching as mine reached, blossoming when I too blossomed, a quiet companion through so many of my life turnings. To find it suddenly vanished makes me contemplate the silence like a place where a dear friend once stood.

At five years old: My small back pressed against the tree trunk right above where it met the earth, finding the curve of a great root that swelled beneath me, sunwarmed and probably strong enough to hold my full weight. Above me, a ceiling of bright green leaves shifted against the endless blue sky while tiny white blossoms, glowing brightly like little stars, released a sweetness so intense that it made the garden air hum with golden bumblebees. I remember tracing the deep ridges and valleys of the bark with my tiny fingers, dirt packed under my nails. I watched the sunlight break into dancing shadows on my bare feet. A wild child as I always was, this was the first place I experienced true stillness, held in the sunwarmed embrace of a first-blooming orange tree.

At eight years old: The bark scraped my knees and the palms of my curious hands as I pushed past the scratchy lower branches guarding the great heights, finding footholds in the twists until I hauled myself deep into the green-golden heart. High in the canopy, my heartbeat loud in my own ears, the world narrowed to leaf-filtered light and the thick scent of warm fruit. My fingers closed around that sun-heated orange skin, dimpled but firm. I twisted the first one free, then another and another, filling my dress hem with fruit like a sling until I heard my mother’s call coming from inside the home. Pressing my cheek against a cool branch, I stayed there motionless for a minute, savouring this feeling of my secret triumph and concealing my giggles until her footsteps faded away.

At twelve years old: The wooden door slammed shut behind me as I stepped into the garden, carrying my raggedy copy of Alice in Wonderland, my favourite blanket, and the bruised feeling from a difficult school day. Finding the familiar curve of the root, I spread the blanket and leaned my spine against the solid trunk, the rough bark snagging at my cardigan while the fading blossoms gave way to tiny green promises above. Opening the book, words about hastish white rabbits and talking caterpillars mingled with the hum of bees working the last flowers. A lizard darted over the sun-baked stones near the base, and when I closed my eyes, the silence of the tree seeped into my restless little mind, holding space for my first frustrations without ever asking anything in return.

At fifteen years old: The blonde boy and I walked the garden path at dusk, the fireflies gleaming erratically near the gates until he suddently stopped beneath the orange tree. Standing close but not touching, the air thickened with night-blooming jasmine and fading citrus, until his hand brushed mine in a quick and nervous touch, as we talked in our low voices about nothing important. Above us, the leaves rustled softly, our own private soundtrack in the quiet garden. Later in the night, when I was alone and swaying with joy, I softly carved our initials in the centre of the trunk with a loveheart drawn around it. My first love confession was received wholeheartedly and kept safe by this flowering vault.

At nineteen years old: February draped the whole world in grey: the sky, the earth, and the hollow inside me after my grandmother’s passing. Wandering without purpose into the stripped garden, I found the tree standing stark, defiantly holding a few remaining fruits that glowed like little suns against the dull branches. Cold numbed my fingers as I reached up, twisting one stubborn globe free, and peeled it slowly until the citric scent cut through the bleakness of winter. Placing the unbroken segments in a circle on the frozen ground at the tree’s base, I made an altar of impossible colour against the all-consuming greyness.

At twenty-five years old: Returning home after a long time, the house looked smaller, the garden paths felt narrower, and I walked straight towards the tree standing under the late-summer weather. Touching that bark again, I wondered if it grew rougher without me or if my hands were somehow gentler. I leaned my forehead against it, letting the rugged surface scratch my skin as the familiar scent of sun-baked earth rose around me. A cicada screamed from the canopy and the stableness of the trunk against my bones became like an anchorage, a place to hold steady as the weight of both our years laded into this moment, together.

At twenty-eight years old: Standing on the empty ground this afternoon, unfiltered sunlight stung my neck and the air smelled only of damp earth and splintered wood where deep shade once pooled. Tracing the stark outline against the sky where I thought branches should be, I knelt to find sawdust coating the grass blades and the pale, ringed surface of the stump like a target. Touching the rough edge still faintly warm from the midday sun, I felt the absence: the hum of bees gone, the scent of blossoms gone, the solid presence that held my small back and shared in my secrets gone. Only this sun-warmed scar remained, a testament to what was lost. Tonight, I am outside writing an elegy to my dear old friend.