Crosses and Cemeteries: How Rae Champagne Reimagines Death
Death as Presence, Not Intrusion
In Rae Champagne’s Fierce Like an Oak Tree, death is not an intrusion. It’s a presence. And more than that—it’s often a companion. In the hands of a lesser writer, this might drift toward sentimentality, but Champagne sidesteps cliché entirely. Instead, she offers something rare in contemporary fiction: a portrait of death that is absurd, communal, tender, and above all, alive.
Two of the most memorable stories in the collection, “Tree, Wood, Cross” and “Little Puppies in Heaven,” center around death—but never dwell in despair. They do something more interesting: they consider how memory, ritual, and even humor shape our understanding of the afterlife. In Champagne’s hands, cemeteries become living spaces, grave markers become guideposts, and mourning becomes a kind of creative act.
The Five-Hearse Funeral and the Wisdom of Children
In “Tree, Wood, Cross,” the narrator is a child swinging beneath a mighty oak, her hands stained with rust from the chains. From this perch, she watches a five-hearse funeral procession roll by—one of the largest her small Louisiana community has ever seen. A family has died in a fire, including two young girls and a beagle puppy. The story is heartbreaking, but not heavy. Champagne writes with restraint, grounding the narrative in the physicality of the swing, the bark of the tree, and the circular motion of a child trying to understand.
The swing, the tree, and the handmade wooden crosses carved by the deceased father become a set of symbols: of grief, yes, but also of craftsmanship, care, and legacy. The narrator doesn’t attempt to solve death—she tries to see it. She squints to create the right angle, and suddenly the row of wooden crosses in the cemetery align, forming “a perfect line that ascends into the horizon and appears to extend forever.” It’s a striking image, quietly theological, and it invites us to think about lineage as something both earthly and eternal.
Death by Yoo-hoo and the Power of Ritual
If “Tree, Wood, Cross” introduces death as an intimate mystery, “Little Puppies in Heaven” takes it further, folding in shock, absurdity, and ultimately, communal joy. A beloved family friend dies at a bluegrass festival—suddenly, while drinking a Yoo-hoo. The cause? A dislodged pull-tab from the can. It’s a freak accident. The kind of detail that would feel fabricated if it weren’t so strange and true. Champagne doesn’t play it for laughs, but she doesn’t sanctify it either. Instead, she traces the fallout—particularly the transformation it ignites in the narrator’s father, Raym.
Raym’s grief leads him not into isolation, but into action. He begins visiting the cemetery daily, walking the rows, speaking aloud the names on the headstones, asking neighbors to share stories of their loved ones. What he’s doing is ancient: he’s restoring memory. And when that restoration becomes too heavy, he does something no one expects. He organizes a congé—a ceremonial farewell, a parade of sorts, through the graveyard, complete with balloons, rose petals, and hymns played on a Model A Ford and an accordion.
The Cemetery Parade: Joy as Rebellion
The image of a girl flinging rose petals from a rumble seat as Mackie belts out “Everybody Will Be Happy Over There” is unforgettable. It’s Southern gothic with a wink. It’s grief as theater, ritual, resistance. It says: we’ll not only remember you—we’ll celebrate you. Not in some distant heaven, but right here, in this place where you once lived and laughed and cooked teacakes.
What’s radical about Champagne’s vision is not that she finds joy in the face of death—that’s a trope. It’s that she allows death itself to be familiar. Not monstrous. Not glamorous. Just part of the neighborhood. She writes: “Because he had personally witnessed someone’s life end, [Raym] wanted an understanding of what was next. He reasoned that if he knew that friends were sitting in rocking chairs on a front porch waiting on him to get there, then he could look forward to his own death, and perhaps live with a little more abandon.”
Living with Abandon
That last part is what lingers: live with a little more abandon. Champagne’s stories don’t aim to settle theological debates or reduce death to a lesson. Instead, she invites us to walk among the crosses, to talk out loud to our dead, to organize our sadness into quilts, songs, and processions. To trust that memory might be a kind of presence. And that love—at its most persistent—is probably a little weird, a little funny, and wildly alive.
By the end of Fierce Like an Oak Tree, we see that death is not the opposite of life in Champagne’s world. It’s part of the soil. The oak tree roots don’t end at the grave—they grow right through it. And somewhere in the branches above, you can still hear the sound of chains creaking, and a little girl swinging.
Read More from Rae Champagne
Explore the full collection and see why readers are calling it “Southern gothic with a heart.” You can buy *Fierce Like an Oak Tree* on Amazon or learn more about Rae Champagne on her author page at Westbrae Literary Group.
