The Red Ornament

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BY: Sandy Greig
CATEGORY: News and Community

This fall marked the 4th anniversary of Sandy Greig’s dad, Dale Greig’s passing at age 81 from leukemia. Mr. Greig was the proud owner of Greig Christmas Tree Farm in Willoughby Hills. The Red Ornament tells the special story of how his spirit lives on and is honored even after his physical passing as told by his daughter:

My dad had been battling leukemia for over 18 months. When he exhausted all treatment possibilities and his health declined rapidly, he transitioned to hospice home care through Hospice of the Western Reserve. We were very fortunate to have the Hospice of the Western Reserve staff at my parent’s home when my dad passed. The hospice nurses were very active in controlling his pain, monitoring and keeping him comfortable. They were also very kind and caring, while addressing all of our questions and concerns and comforting us as a family. 

The day he passed was very hard, but it was also joyful and full of laughter. My dad was surrounded by his family, including his wife of over 50 years, five kids, several grandchildren and other family members. We were there all day, remembering and sharing stories of our youth. The staff of Hospice of the Western Reserve gave us such a wonderful gift that day. They took care of my dad’s physical needs which allowed us to surround him with laughter and love. 

Additionally, they provided educational grief booklets. My son was very young at the time and these guided us in discussing death and grieving with him in an honest way.

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Photo Caption: Dale Greig and his brother, Claude

A Gift from Above

My family owns a Christmas tree farm. We have now for over fifty years. I swear, there's pine sap in my blood. As long as I can remember, we've sold trees from the house I grew up in. I remember moving trees from the trailer to the garage in the rain, the snow, in short sleeves and shorts.

I haven't always loved the Christmas tree business, especially when I wanted to sleep in on a Saturday morning or go shopping on a Sunday afternoon, but this is what we do, as members of the Greig family, during the Christmas season. We sell a little bit of Christmas, one beautiful pine tree at a time.

The trees actually live in Ashtabula County, Ohio. It's roughly a small nap from my parent's house. Let's do the numbers: we have a couple hundred acres in Ashtabula County. Within one of the hundred acre plots, we have about thirty acres of Christmas trees: scotch pine, white pine, Canaan fir, blue spruce and grand fir. We have a lot of birch and maples, but no one ever wants one of those for Christmas. On these thirty acres, we have about ten thousand trees. 

This past year, like every year before it, each tree was seen at least five times by either one of my brothers, or my dad. The trees are planted, trimmed, mowed around, and tagged or not tagged for the Christmas season. In other words, Jeff, Doug and my dad know the trees pretty well.

All the tagged trees are cut, bailed, transported and ready for sale by Thanksgiving. This means we spend a couple of long weekends in November at the farm. It's nice there. We have a giant barn there. It's painted in green and red and contains tractors and trailers, chainsaws and nippers, and fifty thousand left-handed gloves...I can never find a right-handed one.

Lucky for me, this past November, one weekend was a mix of sun and 65 degrees and the next weekend was cold with lake effect snow. I’d rather have snow over rain, even though my yellow rain suit is very slimming on me.

On the last weekend of cutting, my brother Jeff asked me if I saw the red ornament. I looked at him dubiously.

“I found a red ornament under a tree,” he said. Then he just tilted his head and shrugged his shoulders.

His son, Colin, said, “I think it's from above,” as he pointed towards heaven.

I told Colin that I liked the way he thought.

Normally, finding things in the yard would not be a big deal. Over the years, we've found lots of old tires and deflated balloons, but that year finding a red ornament seemed very special. It was only a little over two months’ prior that the leukemia had the final say after eighteen months of my father fighting it, one chemo session at a time. I'd like to think that he was happy that all of his kids and his wife of fifty-four years were near him when he died, but I'm sure he would have preferred being on his tractor looking over the legacy that he built.

When I told my four-year-old son, Silvio, that they found a red ornament at the farm he smiled. I asked him how he thought it got there. His response was “Grandpa put it there.'”  

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