The Weeping Lilacs

I have a Secret Garden. It is lined with beautiful Lilac and Snowball bushes. They are 12 to 15 feet high now. They are old bushes that have seen many people pass through the doors of the home they line. The birds love to sit in their branches and gossip to each other all day long. We became the Keepers of the Garden just 2 years ago and have nutured, fed and pruned these wonderful and fragrant gifts. When the lilacs are in bloom...the sweet fragance softly sweeps through my bedroom window each morning as the sun is rising...I look forward to each spring and the wonderful present I get when I awake from my slumber. But, this spring some of the oldest did not bloom nor did they get their leaves. I walked around them and realized that they had died. I was heart broken. I don't know what happened to them. Had they lost their will to live? I doubt I will ever know. So, we had to dig them up...3 lovely bushes. As we dug them up, I cried...it was if I was destroying something precious. I thought, I am a killer of life. It seemed to me that the other lilacs were weeping...I could hear the wind in their branches making the leaves sigh. I felt destroyed. Now, I sit on my back porch looking at the hole that is left and I hate it because now my Secret Garden has been exposed to prying eyes of the nosey neighbors who peak through the hole at my private place. As I sit and stare...I decide to build a fence of hedges so that the hole will be fixed...but I find no satifaction. I miss my lilacs.