Ernestine’s tree

By Teri Stewart | 0:01:50

The stump of an old magnolia is the final resting place of Ernestine, whose grandchildren spread her ashes where she’d spent her childhood playing.

Transcript of the story

This was I guess back in the 90s it happened. There used to be a huge magnolia tree right here between the two houses. One year during a really severe ice storm it split and broke, and it could have wiped out both houses. Miraculously, it didn’t. It fell in between the two houses and killed the tree. Well, I was out working in my yard one day when a group of people – very middle class, sort of straight looking people - pulled up in a car and got out. They said we just wanted to stop and look around, this is where my mother grew up. She had so many fond memories of the house. We started talking, it was very touching actually, they told us they were a bunch of brothers and sisters from all over the country for a specific reason, and that is we have the ashes of our mother Ernestine. It was her wish that her ashes would be sprinkled around the tree that she loved to play in. This is the stump. It had taken them a year to get their mother’s ashes here. The three had died at the same time Ernestine had died. So we took the ashes and we sprinkled them al over the base of the tree. I feel her presence. I go out in the morning and say, “Good morning, Ernestine, you know.”