Gingko trees have a special significance in our family. It all began probably 16 years ago when my brother and sister in law gave my mother and father a gift of a picture for some occasion. The occasion isn't important. What is important is the picture and the frame. It was a picture of my brother's daughter when she was about 18 months old. (She's almost 17 now.) She was sitting on my father's lap and he was reading to her. The frame came to be even more important because embedded in the glass all around the frame were gingko leaves. Someone had apparently either picked them or picked them up when they were still green. They then embedded the leaves between two pieces of glass which were soldered at various points around the frame in much the same way that stained glass is.

My father died on October 27, 2001 after battling Parkinson's Disease for 13 years. The disease ended his career as a professional musician and as soon as he got the official diagnosis, he stopped playing in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra or doing any other professional work. He did teach for a while, though.

When it finally became impossible for my mother to keep my father at home anymore, we had to place him in a nursing home. No one liked the idea, but I understood that it was one of those necessary evils. My father wasn't safe in a home that wasn't handicapped accessible because it had three stories and a basement, and my mother wasn't safe because of my father's increasingly erratic behavior.

When my mom decided to purchase cemetary plots, she told my brother, sister and I that she wanted to plant a memorial tree there for my father. To do so, she'd have to purchase two additional plots to provide sufficient space for the tree. We all decided that a gingko tree would be really special. My father loved the picture frame and the shape of those leaves, so it was something that really had a special significance for the entire family. The tree was planted before my father was buried.

We had a small graveside service for my father -- right next to the tree. Sometime later, a large granite stone would be placed at the head of the two graves....and my father's name and birth and death dates were engraved on it.

The Christmas after my father died, my mother gave my sister and I a beautiful and very special Christmas present. We were each given a gingko leaf pin. An artist had taken a leaf and had used the leave as a kind of mold and poured brass over the leaf, allowing the grain of every line to show through.

The following February (2002,) my mother decided to have a memorial service for my father. It turned out to be more of a concert and reception than anything else. Much to our suprise, my father's colleagues and acquaintances from all the years he'd been a musician crawled out of the woodwork and contacted my mother to ask her if they could play at his service. The principal violist of the Chicago Symphony told my mother he felt compelled to do this because my father had played at his wedding. My sister, my mother and I all wore our gingko pins.

Whenever I go to Chicago, I try to visit the cemetary, to pay my respects to my father and to the tree. I collect rocks from special places I've visited and each time I go to the cemetary, I try to remember to bring a rock to place it at the foot of the headstone.

Gingko trees still have a special place in our family. My brother started this by giving my parents a picture of his daughter in a beautiful hand made frame, but our love for the leaves of the gingko tree, and the fact that my father liked them so much really brought us together as a family. You see, my brother and sister hadn't seen one another for ten years until my father died. It took my father's death and the gingko tree to bring my family together on more than one occasion. As much as I love that tree, I feel a sense of sadness about what was missed for so many years.

I can't think of gingko trees anymore without thinking of my father, and remembering all the wonderful things I loved about him!

 

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