Connections: Requiem for Ed

The death of a friend is dreadful. A gathering of friends who come together to show how much they cared about the one who is gone and to support a family in their grief is, on the other hand, a lesson in living. 

So it was this week when a large crowd of people whose lives had been touched by Ed Hannibal visited the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton, and so it was at the funeral Mass the next day at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton, where the liturgy and a moving eulogy reminded all there of what a fine man he had been.

Ed was 78 when he died on Dec. 6. He had five children and seven grandchildren and friends and associates from many different walks of life. It was not surprising that the assembled were numerous and ranged in age from 4 to the mid-80s. So many wanted to express their sorrow and speak with members of the family. One woman told me later she had stood in line for almost two hours. 

I was one of Ed’s generation and I know that others, like me, could not help but feel the absences of those who had died before. Other fathers and husbands, other mothers and wives. Nor could we help but recognize how much we all had aged, especially if we hadn’t seen each other in a long time.

We reminisced. We spoke about, or tried to remember, how we first met. We brought up riotous occasions that we had shared in the good old days, when this was more of a small town, and said we were sorry to have missed so much of each other’s families in the intervening years after some had moved away, and after the South Fork had boomed into something else.  

We made light of the fact that some of us were not as tall as we used to be. I admitted to having lost two inches, while a friend said he had refused to believe it when his doctor told him he was four inches shorter than before. That is, he refused to believe it until he realized for the first time that his wife was taller than he was.

What remained unsaid was that there is no choice but to accept the fact that, having been lucky enough to survive for so many decades, we, too, are moving on, that some of us will live to mourn the others. 

One of the lessons that came clear is that friendship and expressions of affection matter, that kindness shown makes our own lives worth living. Ed had shown an awful lot. And that — the rare goodness of the life just ended — left us with more than memories. It was a promise to be the best we can.