The Oak
A short story about resilience, death and change
The oak had fallen.
It had been standing upright for centuries, growing older and weaker each year. It had withstood more than five hundred monsoons, but it could not survive the thunderstorm this year. It was probably fated to die in its six hundredth year, because the lightning had chosen to strike only the lone oak among the canopy of a thousand other trees.
Two days had gone by since the thunderstorm had passed. The forest was recovering. The trees surrounding the oak had suffered too — a few branches had snapped due to the frenzied wind and the young plants that grew in the canopy of the larger trees had been laid to waste by the rain. A thick mist had settled close to the ground and moss was already crawling over the mottled, decaying wood of the oak tree.
A broken mess of small twigs and dry leaves lay near its biggest branch and the oak’s canopy hid the smashed eggs. The distressed mother had given up calling out for them and had flown away to another tree. The oak had mumbled a prayer for their souls to rest in peace, and had silently cursed the will of God. His ways were sometimes cruel, taking away the lives of the unborn and depriving their mother of the life she had been preparing for.
The tree now lay pathetically across the grassy ground. It felt no pain, even though the initial shock of the lightning strike had torn apart its roots. The heart of it was dying and yet the tree felt nothing. Every breath it took was a shudder that ran through its crippled body. The oak knew the ways of nature and it knew that the time had come to surrender itself to her. Perhaps it already had. But she hadn’t claimed his life yet. She had her reasons.
As the tree breathed, it remembered. A new, sharp memory with each breath.
The cut on its broad trunk when an axe-bearing human had struck its bare bark and it had splintered and bled, and sealed almost as quickly. It had been hurt, but not broken. Not then. All that was left of the incident was a mere scar.
The tree journeyed further back in its memory with each breath it took. The time a group of people had ventured into the woods to cut the trees. It had seen the younger trees being struck and it had seen the cut bleed. Before it could seal, another blow to the same cut. Fresh blood; how cruel. It had heard the creaks and then the dull crashes as the trees bent and fell to their doom.
The time a village girl had come so far out into the forest just to collect firewood. She had filled her baskets with all the dry branches and the choicest wild figs from the nearby fig tree. She had drunk from the stream nearby and then rested beneath the oak’s verdant canopy.
The time the tree was young and it had rained heavily. The oak had stood proudly throughout the storm. It had fought with the wind. One of its branches broke during the thunderstorm. That was when it realised the power of nature and the goodwill to bend.
The time it was a tiny plant. The sheer joy in living. The surprise of something new that every day brought. The freshness of its first rain and the wonder of its first spring. The first time it saw the world when it fought its way out of the soil to breathe.
And now. The oak sighed.
It knew that it had lived a long life. Better still, a fulfilling one. It is said that an oak tree spends its first three hundred years growing, the next three hundred years living and its last three centuries in slow decline. It was probably meant to spend its entire life living and learning. Perhaps the oak always knew in its subconscious that when death would come, it wouldn’t be expected. It would come suddenly like an old friend after a long time.
A light shower began and the wood grew damper. The tree remembered. While remembering, it gave way.
In its last shuddering breath, the oak registered the smell of wet earth and the sharp, strong smell of oak leaves. It felt the last gust of wind.
The last rain.
Years later, there was sunshine.
Sunlight broke through the dense canopy of leaves and fell to the forest floor, spreading like a liquid thing. The surreal aura of spring was everywhere, in the breeze, in the sunshine and in every living thing.
A new day.
There was no sign of the dead oak that had died almost a decade ago. Only its memory persisted among the trees of the forest. Through the years, a lot had changed. A lot had withered away, but a lot had grown too. Abundant grass covered the mound of the old oak’s grave and tiny pink flowers hid shyly behind the long blades of green.
A new plant stood where the oak had fallen. It was young and had a lot to learn about the world. It had felt the same light-headed wonder as the oak had the moment it had sprouted out of the soil. It would collect similar memories as the oak had throughout its life. It would learn that surrendering to the flow of the current was sometimes better than fighting against it. It would learn that cruelty existed and so did goodness. It would grow tall and invite the smaller denizens of the forest to make a home in its sheltered branches.
It had a lot of time to learn, to live and to age. More than six hundred years, if it was lucky. The new oak had heard several stories about the mighty one it had been born from. Some told it about the way the old oak had stood proudly tall for centuries. Some described its generosity, how it was a home for more creatures than any other tree in the forest. The oldest trees in the neighbourhood admired its will to live and the wisdom to pass away gracefully.
In a way, the new oak would carry on the legacy of the greater one. It would rise to become, once again, the only oak in the entire forest, a testament to time, strength and resilience. When death would come, it would leave the world with grace and leave the legacy for the next oak that would rise on the same grave.
Old would once again change into new. Storm into spring… After all, what was death if not a change of seasons?
About the story
I rediscovered this short story when I was reading through some of my old diaries and I felt like writing it all over again. I’m not sure what inspired the story, but while reading it again, I felt like the oak’s character encapsulates my idea of the way a tree might think.
What would a living tree be feeling as it is assaulted by the axe over and over and left to crash to the ground it rose from? What would a tree be feeling as it dies alone? What would a tree be feeling at each step of its growth, about every new thing it sees? These are the sort of questions I kept thinking about as I rewrote the story of the oak.
For me, the death of the oak and the birth of another on the very same grave is indicative of rebirth. As I read in one of my favourite books, Chained by Lynne Kelly, the author describes rebirth as a candle giving its light to another before extinguishing. Somewhere in the world, perhaps in someone we don’t know, our loved ones that departed from this world have given birth to another candle that will in turn give light to another.
The old oak is an embodiment of what I think a wise tree would be like — with the wisdom it acquires from the life it has lived, it understands the power of resilience and the power of surrender when required; it understands the grace in living and the grace in dying, and this is the knowledge it passes on to the oak that will continue its legacy.
Most of us fear death, understandably, because it’s hard to think that once our loved ones die, we will never be able to see or talk to them again. It’s unthinkable that once we die, we will leave everyone behind. We will never feel anything again. We also tend to fear change, and death is probably the greatest change we will ever experience.
I know that death is a hard thing to process, and without romanticizing it, I have tried to give a different perspective to it through this story. By learning to accept death and get rid of the fear it brings, we can finally learn to let go gracefully. And what better way to learn than look up to the oldest and the wisest of all the living beings — the trees?
