‘This old soldier has numbered days’ I tell Seth. He looks at me oddly, gives it a push. It doesn’t budge, ‘it’s fine mama, look’ but I shake my head. ‘No darling, it isn’t, look where the stag beetles have been, look at the conks climbing up from the base’. He gives me his oh well look. As we walk away I whisper up into its branches, ‘it’s time my friend, you have earned the peace that will follow, let your roots free’.