My maternal grandfather passed away when I was two years' old. Most of the things I know about him, I heard from my parents and my grandmother. But I do carry one vivid memory of Grandfather that is my own. It is the sole memory I have of him.

My parents and I used to visit my grandparents' place every week—we still do. Whenever we would visit, Grandfather would take his place on the middle sofa in their small living room. He would then pick me up, put me on his knees and sing baby songs and lullabies to me while rocking ever so slightly in his sofa.

This memory is one of the earliest I have. It is also my most emotional and powerful memory. Because whenever I visit Grandfather's grave, even now, twenty-two years on, this memory resurfaces. And a lump forms in my throat, my inhaling grows deep and erratic and tears fight their way onto my eyes, drooping on my cheeks and falling on the earth below which he now resides.

On his grave grows a tree—a sugar-apple tree. The sugar-apple tree is typically small but can grow up to eight metres (twenty-six feet) high. The one on my grandfather's grave is a more modest three to four metres (roughly eleven feet) high. It bears a strange-looking, pine cone-like, green fruit with white flesh. The flesh of the sugar-apple tastes like custard though much "fruitier."

Noone planted that sugar-apple tree on Grandfather's grave. It started germinating soon after he was buried. Noone unrooted it while it became a small shrub either and noone cut it down as it spread its shadow across his entire grave. I think everyone associated the sugar-apple tree with a symbolic rebirth of Grandfather.

This is how nature works. It is an eternal recycling of matter. We are made of particles which are only transiently ours. Those particles are on loan from the universe and they must be returned one day or another. Once they are returned, nature puts them to use again, utilising them to create other lives.

The microorganisms that decompose his body, feed on the particles that made him so as to grow and reproduce. So do the worms and the insects. And so does the sugar-apple tree. Its roots pull nutrients emanating from the grave so it can grow and reproduce. It reproduces by forming sugar-apple fruits. And in those fruits are some of the particles which were originally part of Grandfather. Particles which, in a majestic chorus of collectivism, conspired and enabled Grandfather to pick me up and place me on his knees twenty-two years ago.

When I visited his grave last week, none of the sugar-apple fruits the tree was bearing were ripe. They were all relatively small with hard skins still. One of the larger ones was within plucking distance however as its weight had curbed its holding branch away from the tree's apex. After several attempts, standing on tiptoes, I managed to pluck the fruit. It was a banal pluck of heavenly proportions. Because when I saw the sugar-apple in my hands, I knew that this time, it was I who was holding Grandfather.

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This post initially appeared on my blog for Nature Education.