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Charlene Elderkin

Where the Tree Falls the Forest Rises: Stories of Death and Renewal

One change that death brings to the bereaved is rarely discussed -- the power of death to generate new life in those who loved the deceased.


Where the Tree Falls, the Forest Rises* is a collection of true stories that offer an intimate glimpse into personal renewal following the death of a loved one. Each a unique voice in varied circumstances, these first-hand accounts illustrate how ordinary people find a way to integrate the death of their beloved into a forever-changed life. How this integration unfolds and when is as varied as the people writing their stories. For example:

  • When her baby brother dies, ten-year-old Kate discovers new life in the power of words and poetry.

  • Doreen writes a letter to her husband on what would be their 25th wedding anniversary, realizing that she has now lived without him for almost as long as she had lived with him.

  • For Nancy and Becky, the seeds of the change take root as they support their sister-in-law in her dying process.

  • John, a funeral director, sees his work with new eyes when his own father dies.

  • After a prom night car accident kills a teenage boy, the community discovers a strength they didn't know they had in helping his family care for his body at home.



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I am a different person than I was before the death of my mother, Arlene, who died of chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Her ability to face death without fear and with a great deal of practicality had a profound effect on me. Within a year I became a hospice volunteer. Two years later I co-founded the Threshold Care Circle, a non-profit organization that educates and empowers families and communities to care for their dead at home. New traditions are emerging in the small rural community where I live, as mourners gather in the family home instead of the funeral home, as they sing their goodbyes while the departed loved one is carried in a hand-decorated coffin to the family van. Ten years after Mom's death, I began learning to play the harp so I could provide therapeutic music for the dying, which is the work I do now. My mother's death planted the seeds for all that change.

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This anthology covers all relationship categories: mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, spouses/sweethearts, extended family, friends, community. It includes photos submitted by the storytellers of their loved ones.



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* Title is a line taken from Wendell Berry's poem, The Rising.

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* Excerpt from The Rising, by Wendell Berry

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There is a grave, too, in each

survivor. By it, the dead one lives.

He enters us, a broken blade,

sharp, clear as a lens or mirror.

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Like a wound, grief receives him.

Like graves, we heal over, and yet keep

as part of ourselves the severe gift.

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By grief, more inward than darkness,

the dead become the intelligence of life.

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Where the tree falls, the forest rises.

There is nowhere to stand but in absence,

no life but in the fateful light.

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