I Can Hear the Georgia Pines Cry

In Memory of my friend, Ed Soto

Be it so, for I submit, his doom is fair,
That dust I am, and shall to dust returne:
O welcom hour whenever! why delayes
His hand to execute what his Decree
Fixd on this day? why do I overlive,
Why am I mockt with death, and length'nd out
To deathless pain? how gladly would I meet
Mortalitie my sentence, and be Earth
Insensible . . .

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book X, lines 769-777

When Adam reflects upon his sin, just prior to being expelled from Eden, he speaks morosely. The phrase, “why do I overlive,” has stuck in my mind for a long time when I think about Milton’s Adam and what it means to live with one’s sins. As I reflect on what I consider the early death of my friend Ed Soto, Milton’s Adam also enters my mind.

My friend did not suffer from overwhelming guilt, as Adam does here, but he could be moribund at times. And after being diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, he often spoke to me of being “ready,” using terms similar to what we see here in Adam’s soliloquy. Like Adam, Ed’s destination has been reached and the sense that life is long on this earth no longer afflicts him. I’d like to spend just a few minutes thinking about why I feel a certain loss at Ed’s passing, though we had not enjoyed each other’s physical presence since COVID-tide.

I first met Ed on the Treasure Coast of Florida, when I came to work a small, Christian school doing good work in Vero Beach. The time I spent there, only three years, proved incredibly formative for my career, not least in part thanks to Ed’s tutelage. He was the one primarily in charge of teacher training when I was hired, and his great intolerance for bureaucracy meant that the time was well-spent and focused on useful things. Though I had been interested in the Classical model of education prior to meeting Ed, he embodied it in the classroom and made it appear easy to accomplish.

Ed and I circa 2014.

In addition, my had an immense memory, often recalling books he’d read fifteen years ago with such acuteness you’d thought he had finished it only yesterday. After only a few days at the school, I knew that I would need to shift how I was reading if I was going to keep pace with Ed. It wasn’t enough to read widely; what would be required of me was a closer reading coupled with serious retention. Though I didn’t know anything about commonplace books at the time, this was the first steps I took towards a greater understanding of that wonderful monastic practice which shaped men like John Milton.

And this was the pattern of learning under Ed: simple presentation of an old, established maxim for aid in the present day. He and I both left Central Florida the same year, Ed heading for Georgia and myself heading for the Florida Panhandle. We never worked together again, but we stayed in regular contact in the intervening decade. Emails, phone calls, and occasional visits kept our friendship going long after the commonality of work brought us together. He was a man whom I could bounce idea off of, and he felt like he could do likewise. He would send me emails detailing the struggles he had with the great novel he was writing in Georgia, and I in turn would send him bits of my dissertation to get his feedback.

One of our most common bits of conversation to return to related to the Spanish Civil War. My interest in it began with the study of Hemingway, while Ed’s sprung up after he read The Cypresses Believe in God by José María Gironella. And though neither of us had been to Spain,¹ we maintained this interest and would reflect on it in our emails and talks over the years. Something in the Spanish Civil War prompted both of us to think deeply about the relationship of religion and the civil magistrate, as well as the habits of ordinary men and women.

I could relate even more about such ideas, and the ways that Ed and I engaged them over the years, but I am saving those for myself. There will come a day soon when I will sit down and feel compelled to write out a quick email to my friend, asking his thoughts about something, only there will not be anyone to read the message on the other end. I may still send it off, just for my own sake. Though I haven’t here reflected on the immense hospitality of the Ed and his wife Marilyn, on their charity and gentleness, all of which I will miss in the coming months, it is my friend as an intellectual compatriot that feels the deepest loss right now. But Ed has gone to meet his “Mortalitie,” and I know that this is far greater for him than the feeling that something is missing for me.

So I’ll close with a prayer, from the ANCA Book of Common Prayer, something that offers great comfort at times such as these:

O God, who by the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light: Grant that your servant Ed, being raised with Christ, may know the strength of his presence and rejoice in his eternal glory; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. And most merciful God, whose wisdom is beyond our understanding: I ask that you deal graciously with those who mourn, especially Marilyn. Surround her with your love, that she may not be overwhelmed by her loss, but have confidence in your goodness, and strength to meet the days to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

1. I was fortunate enough to visit Spain this past summer (2024). Ed did not tell me how ill he had gotten at that point, unfortunately.