The telling
The deer sheds its antlers each year and grows them again. So the antler marks not death but renewal, and for that reason it is cut into gravestones.

The Middle World · Birch
A forked antler. Shed and regrown each year — the mark of renewal.
The deer sheds its antlers each year and grows them again. So the antler marks not death but renewal, and for that reason it is cut into gravestones.