Living Headstones - Tom Finneran
Friday, October 09, 2020
Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the House in MA
Heavy gray granite slabs.
Under his loving care, those heavy stones breathe.
Under his loving care, those slabs come alive. They speak, volumes.
He’s the reverent cemetery keeper and his stones tell stories of love, of life, of loss.
He knows that each stone---and there are many---is near and dear to some local family. And that knowledge keeps him reverent.
Spring, summer, and fall are his special seasons. Winter’s snowy jacket buries those objects of his attention and affection. But in the spring, summer, and fall he performs his faithful magic. The grass is raked and manicured. The edges are neatly trimmed. The flowers are lovingly planted. And visitors, always subdued in quiet memories, drink in the tranquility of his work. It’s that tranquility which eases the pain of the what-ifs carried by every visiting family.
The whole range of human existence rests here. Infants lost, never having seen a second day. Sick children who never had a fair chance. Promising teens snatched away by life’s twists and turns. Young mothers and fathers, leaving children and grief in their wake. Wise but hobbled elders who ran a full race. The reverent cemetery keeper “knows” them all, particularly the babies and the children, and more particularly the soldiers.
He quietly curses as he quietly prays. He curses the follies of war. He prays for the success of diplomats and the demise of tyrants and aggressors. He knows where his sons of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam, rest. He knows where his fathers of Korea, World war II, World War I, and the Civil War lay their heads. And he wonders about the lives they would have led, but for the bullets of an enemy soldier.
He knows that in life, the what-ifs accumulate. The what-ifs of saving science, the what-ifs of medicine, the what-ifs of disease and politics, of war and of wrong place, wrong time. He ponders these and many things, stirred by faith and hope for a better tomorrow.
As autumn’s leaves begin to fall, he wanders the gentle hills of this oasis. He’s the reverent cemetery keeper, watching over his charges. And they rest in the peace of his prayers.
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