“Your father lies beneath a stone,′ old Aedwen mumbles, dozing at her wheel, and Godric thinks how it’s a stone as well they’re all beneath. The stone is need and hurt and gall and tongue-tied longing, for that’s the stone that kinship always bears, yet the loss of it would press more grievous still.”

“Your father lies beneath a stone,′ old Aedwen mumbles, dozing at her wheel, and Godric thinks how it’s a stone as well they’re all beneath. The stone is need and hurt and gall and tongue-tied longing, for that’s the stone that kinship always bears, yet the loss of it would press more grievous still.”

— Frederick Buechner