A reader writes:
My granddaughter is typing this for me because my hand shakes now, but the words are mine. She says I must tell you she is not allowed to fix my grammar. That is right.
I am eighty-one years old. In March I planted twelve grafted mango trees, six Julie and six East Indian, along the bottom piece of the land my father left to me. Also two breadfruit, one ackee and a june plum that a man at church gave me in a paint pan. A grafted mango can bear in a few years if you treat it good, but to be a proper big tree that feeds a whole yard, that is plenty years more. I will not see that. I know it. My doctor knows it. My children tell me every Sunday.
My son in Florida says, Daddy, why you spending your pension on trees? Buy yourself a better bed. My daughter who lives in Mandeville says the same thing but softer. The one who worries me most is my middle son who is not saying anything at all, because he wants to sell the bottom piece, and trees make it harder to sell, and he knows I know that.
So let me explain myself, because I think plenty old people feel what I feel and don’t say it.
When I was a boy, maybe seven or eight, I used to climb a big Number Eleven mango tree by the gate. Big like a house. I used to sit up in it after school and eat till my belly hurt. Years later I found out that tree was planted by my great-grandfather, a man who was born not long after slavery ended, who had nothing, who worked other people’s land most of his life and bought that little piece at the end. He never ate one mango off it. Not one. He died and the tree was still a young thing. But I ate from it, and my father ate from it, and when the tree finally came down in a hurricane when I was a big man, I cried like a baby, and I was not ashamed.
A man planted something for a little boy he would never know. That is the best thing anybody ever did for me that I did not see happen.
I am not a educated man. I left school early. But I read my Bible. In the book of Hebrews it talk about the old people of faith who died “not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off” (Hebrews 11:13). That is how I feel when I stand at the bottom piece in the evening. I see them afar off. I see my great-grandchildren I don’t know yet, picking mango and fighting over who get the biggest one. I see them afar off and I am glad.
Now I am not stupid either. Planting trees is not the same thing as sorting out the land. My granddaughter made me go with her to see a lawyer in Santa Cruz last year about a will, and I am glad she did, because I was always saying “next year” to that. Things are written down now. I will not tell you what it says, that is family business, but I will tell you I put in there that the trees on the bottom piece are to be minded, whoever gets it. Maybe that will count for nothing if they decide to sell. But I said my piece on paper, not just by mouth, and that is more than my own father did. We had a whole heap of confusion after he died because nobody knew what he wanted.
I talked to my middle son too, finally, on the phone. I told him, if you have to sell, sell. I will not curse you from the grave. But think about it first. Walk the land before you decide. Taste the first mango. He laughed a little bit. That is something.
Every morning I go down with two buckets. I cannot carry them full any more so I carry them half. I water the young trees one by one, and I talk to them. My granddaughter thinks that is funny. I tell her, the trees don’t mind. Sometimes I pray while I am doing it. Mostly I just thank God for the rain we got in May, and ask Him to keep the goats out, because my neighbour’s goats have no fear of God at all.
People think old age is only about losing things. It is plenty of that, I won’t lie. My wife is gone eleven years. My knees are gone. Half my friends from school are in the churchyard. But I found out you can still give, even at the end, and the giving makes the losing easier to carry. When I am down at the bottom piece with the buckets, I am not an old man waiting to die. I am a man working for somebody.
If you are young and reading this, plant something. It doesn’t have to be a tree. And if you are old like me, plant something anyway. It is not too late to be somebody’s great-grandfather by the gate.
— Mr E.B., St Elizabeth
Editor’s note
Mr B’s letter carries a quiet wisdom. He plants for people he will never meet, and he also does the less romantic work of putting his wishes in writing so that his family is not left guessing, as his own was. Both are gifts to the next generation. His honesty with his son is worth noticing too: he does not try to control the land from the grave, but he asks for thought before any decision. For families holding land, the lesson is to talk early, put things on paper with a qualified attorney-at-law, and remember that what we leave behind is measured in more than acres.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.
Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com
Visit our YouTube Community ↗