Change can be very difficult.

I say this not as some empty platitude, but as someone who, at only 34 years old, has some real experience on the matter. I say it as someone who no longer lives in the state where they were born. I say it as someone whose middle school and high school (and even the buildings that constituted the university where I grew into the person I am now) have all been demolished or repurposed into completely different things; places I will never visit again, even for a stroll down memory lane.

I say this as someone living separated from all their blood-related, immediate family; each off in a different part of the country living their lives and each of us trying to capture and relish in the rare moments where our paths are able to connect.

I know a thing or two about change, and how hard it can be.

This is why I found it so inspiring and beautiful to see what has happened to a sad, ailing copper beech tree on a peaceful library lawn in East Providence.

Faced with the harsh reality that this stately, ancient tree (at least as we grade it on our fragile, short human scale) was headed towards an early grave, the city chose to pursue a path I’ve not seen done elsewhere in my own experience. They chose to memorialize the tree, and embrace its ongoing change at the same time.

Rather than try to continue to fight against nature, or rip off the bandaid and remove the tree entirely, they put out a call to artists — to those champions of the abstract who try to take impossible concepts like “anguish” and “hope” and “love” and “change”, and present them to us in a visual, emotionally affecting manner that somehow makes us understand them better.

I had my doubts about how this could be accomplished with a tree, particularly one that looked quite sad and lifeless already. But seeing the work done by Anthony Heinz May, which is featured on our front page this week, filled me with a sense of joy that is equally hard to describe.

The tree is different. It has changed. Bugs and disease and the undefeated march of time made that impossible to avoid. But an infusion of artistic vision, and an authentic love for what the tree means and represents, made that change into something uniquely wonderful. Into a piece of art.

Those who have had the blessing to have lived in East Providence for much (or all) of their lives — those who perhaps remember this tree from when they were carefree children running loose and wild and free — they may see the tree in its new form and find feelings that aren’t so positive. They might find feelings of sadness, anger, perhaps even betrayal that something was done to a cherished memory. They may not want to face the change.

All of those emotions are valid, and should be given their own space to be felt. But after processing those feelings, I hope they too will find that while we would all like for things to stay the same, change can create renewed beauty we never would have found otherwise.