O’Erpine
v. intr.
to wander through the grounds of a cemetery, glancing over the gravestones as if you were people-watching the dead, imagining all the things they must have seen and the lives they might have led, trying to conjure up an entire biography from a handful of words and dates etched in granite, with barely more than a single dash to cover the unimaginable vastness of their experience.
From over, finished and done with + pine, to yearn or grieve for something. Compare the flowering perennial orpine, also called autumn joy or live-forevers, which is often found in open sunny areas of cemeteries. Pronounced “awr-pahyn.”
