The edge of sadness by O'Connor Edwin

Author:O'Connor, Edwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Clergy, Catholics, Alcoholics, Irish Americans, Belief and doubt
Publisher: Boston, Little, Brown
Published: 1961-02-18T05:00:00+00:00

**The wife is a fine woman/' he said, ''but you couldn't trust a woman with a thing hke this!"

He had drawn up his specifications for the funeral: a High Mass from Old Saint Paul's at eight o'clock in the morning; myself to sing it; a quartet in the choir loft; eight bearers, chosen by name: Charlie and P.J. led the list. There were also substitute bearers, in the event that any or all of the originals should predecease him.

He went on. There was to be a two-grave lot in Saint Paul's cemetery, the exact location of which was yet to be determined (I had the feeling that he was currently spending hours wandering through the cemetery, his sharp old eye on the watch for prime sites). His tombstone — like the coffin, already purchased and delivered — was an enormous rectangle of white polished marble. He produced a small card and showed me, in printed letters, the epitaph which he had composed and which would be incised upon the stone:

HERE LIES

A MAN BELOVED

BY ALL

CORNELIUS J. HEFFERNAN

And underneath:

AND HIS LOVING WIFE

MARGARET B.

A strange final equation, surely: short shrift for poor Margaret B.!

He talked with special zeal of the care of his grave. It should be perpetual; he had read only recently of a new grass admirably adapted to this purpose: green the year round, it required little mowing. He had already written to inquire if this grass were suitable for these latitudes.

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