Excerpt from Silent Sentinel, a creative essay by Emily Gibson:
He led us to a corner of the woods, slowed his pace to stand beneath a particular tree. His eyes watering, he explained that this tree was where his boy Lawton hung himself, taking his life at age fourteen, in 1967. Morton still loved this tree, as devastating as it was to lose his son from one of its branches so tragically and unexpectedly. He stood shaking his head, his tears dropping to the ground, and I knew his tears watered this spot often in the previous 23 years. He looked at our boys, a two-year-old in a pack on my back and a four-year-old gripping his daddy's hand, and told us he wished he'd known, wished he could have understood his son's despair, wished daily there was a way to turn back the clock and make it all different. He wanted us to know about this if we were to own these woods, this tree, this ground, with children of our own to raise here.
I was shaken by such raw sharing and by the obvious sacredness of the spot. We grieved too, recognizing what that day long ago, and every day since has meant to this dear old man and family. Though Lawton lay buried in a nearby neighborhood cemetery, a too-young almost-man lost forever for reasons he never found words to express to others, this spot hallowed by his father's tears was his grave, this tree a witness to his last act, his last breath on earth. It became a solemn silent sentinel, neither forgetting nor forgotten.