The Giant Old Apple Tree by William T. Vandegrift, Jr.

A giant old apple tree once stood in my grandparents’ backyard. I remember the tree as being massive. It soared over all the other trees in the neighborhood. My grandfather planted it, a mere sapling, during the war years back in the 1940s.  

Toward the end of his life, from where he lay curled up in a hospital bed that was temporarily installed in the dining room, my grandfather could see through the sunroom windows the top branches of the apple tree, which towered over the slanted roof of the greenhouse that he built thirty years earlier. 

The tree delivered an abundance of green apples. When I was a child, my grandfather and I spent endless hours picking up fallen apples. We’d toss them into a nearby compost pile. Sometimes my grandfather put a bucket on the lawn, and we took turns trying to land the apples inside the bucket. Other times, the game was to simply knock the bucket over. 

When I was a toddler, my grandfather hung a tire from a huge gnarly branch high up in the giant old apple tree. I embraced summer, my favorite season, when the days were long and free. I’d spend hours spinning around and around on the tire until my head felt as if it were going to explode. I loved the intoxicating feel of my insides being reduced to giddiness.

As I grew older, while I slowly spun in the wind, staring at the sky, I contemplated what life held ahead for me. In late fall, the apples, having mostly fallen, remained on the lawn and became soft and rotten. Drunken bees filled the air, drawn to the rotting fruit, and hovered above and beneath me.  

My grandfather reassured me that the bees would not sting if I let them be. I’d close my eyes and inhale the heady aroma of the fermenting apples and listen to the humming of inebriated bees as they landed on me. I’d remain motionless and unafraid as they moved up my arms, down my legs, and through my hair.  

My grandfather was widely known for his applesauce. When I was a teenager, he showed me how to prepare it. We used freshly plucked apples from the tree. After washing the apples, I noticed how my grandfather’s hands trembled as he gripped the peeler and the paring knife.   

My grandmother, with a watchful eye, took me aside and said: “I’m concerned about him.” I hoped her worries were needless, but over time, I noticed my grandfather had lost a great deal of weight. His face became gaunt. On occasion, he took a drive, even late at night, and many times he would get lost. When this happened, my grandmother became frantic as she waited for him to return home.    

During the summer, after I graduated from high school, we went to the Jersey shore for three weeks. I saw my grandfather had become too weak to jump the waves. After often being swept beneath the water, he chose, instead of joining us, to watch us swim while sitting on a plaid bed sheet spread out on the sand.

After a few consultations with his primary care physician, he was sent to a specialist in the city who ordered a multitude of tests. At one appointment, my grandmother overheard the doctors speaking medical jargon to each other. She had no idea what was being said. But, when she heard the word “baseball” mentioned, she knew. Lou Gehrig. Lou Gehrig’s disease. A disease more commonly known these days as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

When my grandfather began to have trouble swallowing, the doctors encouraged him to have a feeding tube inserted. With ALS, choking is a concern. A feeding tube would also allow my grandfather to be nourished with a liquid supplement.

The surgery went well, but complications followed. My grandfather ended up being attached to a respirator. Due to the advancement of his ALS, he was unable to be weaned off the machine, which is what the doctors had promised they’d be able to do. Dependent now on the respirator, my grandfather became further imprisoned by the disease. 

He became both defeated and furious. We brought him home from the hospital, and a portable respirator was set up nearby to help him breathe. He had a tracheotomy that needed to be suctioned on a regular basis to clear it of mucus. My grandmother, my mother, a cousin, and I provided him with around-the-clock care.  

Because of the tracheotomy, my grandfather had difficulty speaking. He scribbled on a pad that we should have let him die instead of his being hooked up to a respirator. He experienced fits of rage and took his anger out on us by throwing anything he had around him: the television remote, his writing pad, or even the small vase filled with wildflowers that my grandmother frequently collected from the garden. Because of his weakened state, his aim was off, and he usually missed striking us.  

The apple tree that could be seen from my grandfather’s bed in the dining room was especially beautiful in Fall at sunset, the leaves colorful and brightly illuminated while the fading sun shone through. In time, we discovered that woodborers had attacked the apple tree. On a very windy night, the giant old tree fell. We heard a thunderous crash that was so loud we thought an airplane had fallen out of the sky.

In the morning, not knowing what we’d find, my grandmother and I wheeled my grandfather, weak and struggling to breathe, outside onto the deck. We were quiet, stunned by the spectacle of the fallen tree, its long branches spread all the way across the property and onto a neighbor’s lawn. My grandmother took my grandfather’s hand and bowed her head as if in prayer, and she whispered to him. I could not hear her, and I did not ask what she had said. Even back then, I knew some things are best meant to be left be.

Artist’s Statement

I write both fiction and nonfiction. I cannot write both at the same time, so I go back and forth between the two. This allows me the much-needed creative distance from one piece as I move to the next. 

When writing nonfiction, I write extensively about my past. Disjointed memories constantly rattle around inside my head. As I write, I rifle through these images, and many times I find myself flooded with even more memories. As I write, I piece these fragments together and I try to place them into a coherent whole that makes sense to not only me but my readers as well. 

Often, I write in my sleep. I’ve discovered I have the ability to make sense of my work while in a dreamlike state. Some of my best writing has come forth this way.

Through writing, I find a sense of calmness that is therapeutic. Writing keeps me from running away from myself and my fears. Writing is my livelihood and with it, I remain sane. 

William T. Vandegrift, Jr. is a novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He lives in Central New Jersey.  His work has appeared in numerous journals including Quarterly West, Poetry Daily, AGNI (online), Kelsey Review, the Brevity Blog, The Writer’s Chronicle, Five on the Fifth, MollyHouse, The Writing Disorder, and Flash Fiction Magazine.  He holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College. He is presently at work on a novel and a memoir.