50 years ago, with her mother’s ashes, Lisa planted a sapling at the edge of the woods to honor her mother, who died from an mystery illness. “I hope you’ll enjoy here, mom,” teary-eyed, she scattered her mother’s ashes around the base of the tree.

Year after year, during the autumn, Lisa would return to give the tree a good trim, until the tree got so tall that she could not trim the tree with her pair of pruners. “You know what?” She said to the tree, “I give up. Shoot for the sky, mother, and reach for the light.”

(100 words)

A little backstory, I was listening to a podcast last week. It was talking about trees and how it’s been “light-eaters.” “Trees,” the interviewee explained, “get tall to get to the light.” That’s where the inspiration for this story comes from.

For Friday Fictioneers