Why Elizabeth Edwards Left God Out of Her Last Goodbye

[ZombieHorde]

by David Gibson

A dying person's last words are often, and perhaps too easily, held out as the key to understanding all that went before, and so it has been with Elizabeth Edwards.

Her final public message, posted on Facebook, was characteristically eloquent, to the point, and full of grace -- that last word being one that Edwards herself often invoked, and one that was often applied to her, especially as she bore up under so many trials, the last of them the cancer that claimed her life on Tuesday.

But the opening line of her public farewell was especially notable for its careful phrasing (Edwards, who did post-graduate work in literature, was, after all, a student of the novelist Henry James) about matters of the soul: "You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces -- my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope," Edwards wrote.

That she seemed to carefully evade a mention of God or Jesus or things eternal and Christian was striking, and it struck some as "odd," in the words of "American Power" blogger and neocon Donald Douglas.

There is more: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/12/08/why-elizabeth-edwards-left-god-out-of-her-last-goodbye/