The Lesson

The Funeral

But of what we are capable, we seldom know. Friends came and the matter was arranged. The day was set for a funeral, and although Ezra had in his possession better clothes, Loring insisted he be buried in the clothes he had worn. For who better to clothe one for death than one’s own hand, galvanized by an originless joy?

He was buried on the top of a hill in a cemetery in that town. There had been talk of removing him to a far city, the place of his birth, where his chess playing was perhaps best remembered. Yet Loring had made her wish known, that he should lie in the nearest cemetery, and that is what they did.

A file of black-clad men and women, on a rainy morning, threading their way up a hill, to where a grave had been dug. His body was put in, and then everyone was gone away.

To Loring it seemed that suddenly everyone was gone away. It was a week later. It was month later. She found herself again and again there by the grave, and it was as though the funeral had just ended, and yet no one was there. His death was still so fresh that she could remember how they had been standing by the bedroom door, and he had observed the way the floor was uneven. The bed, he had said, is uneven because the floor is uneven. And she had said, perhaps the whole house is uneven. And he had said, unsmiling, do not blame the house. It is a good house. He had never been one to smile when laughing. And then they had gone to sleep.

Many worried that Loring would not be able to get along after Ezra’s death, but those fears proved groundless. Neighbors saw her each morning on the walks she had once taken by his side, and they saw at her evening, returning from the market. The signboard was still posted by the house, and she continued to take students, and to teach them well.

To her the grief did not diminish, but for the rest — it was soon old news. Life is always presenting new things that distract us from the old. After a while, no one asked her anymore about her husband, was she missing him. She came and went and it was for others as though he had not been. Yet each day she went to the cemetery, and renewed the freshness of his loss, and kept it close. For where he had been the largeness of her life, now his loss was; his loss was, and the worth of what he had been: those two things together became the core. And in that she was admitted into her own secret, and she went about as a person in a cloak and comforted thereby.