Tim Stone

Tuesday, we went to calling hours for a cousin of Joel's. Being Christian myself, I was happy to find out that he was also and actively so. It takes some of the sting out of losing someone to feel that their presence exists even if they are not present. I am always very touched to see family at a funeral. I wonder if we make ourselves go to funerals of people we sometimes barely know.... to be seen more than to see. To let the family know that we're 'there' for them. There was a term that I heard several times growing up... it was " a show of numbers" or "make a presence". It was something insisted on at weddings and funerals and graduations. It was important to my grandmother as she faced heart surgery just a day before a cousin's wedding that the rest of us all go to the wedding. She didn't want my cousin to turn around on her wedding day to see an empty church. I remember as a teenager taking comfort in the number of people in the guest book at my other grandmother's funeral.. I didn't know most of the names in it but knowing that so many people took time to be present was a comfort in itself. I think that we make a presence to mark the passing of a presence in our own lives. We stand like an informal honor guard to line the doorway giving dignity to an exit and a mass of support to those who feel an emptiness. I always thought it was odd, when I was a child, that people who barely saw each other or knew what to say to one another came to rites of passage.. baptisms and graduations and weddings and funerals. We don't always know how to gather socially but at least we make sure we're there to line the passageways for each other.

I've lost many people in my life that I cared about without really realizing how much they meant to me just because they had presence in my life. 'She' told me stories of my grandmother as a girl. 'He' let me put a piece of wood at one edge of the fire that was boiling sap into syrup and let me think that no one else would have been able to reach that spot. I didn't spend a lot of time with these people but the moments I had with them gave great value to my life. They were people who lived in the periphery of my life's focus and yet formed a part of the numbers that made me feel safe. It was surprisingly important to me to be a presence at their passings.


I will miss chatting with this cousin at family gatherings and I will miss the way he made a point of saying hello. I will miss seeing him and thinking of the way he teased an older family member out of being upset with me when I inadvertantly hurt her feelings as a new member of the family. I will miss a comfortable and pleasant presence in our lives. Even as I say all of this, I know that the way I will miss him is nothing compared to the way he will be missed by the people who felt his presence every day -- the people who stood next to him and were shaped by him. I think of us all at the calling hours standing around talking without knowing what to say. All of us a little stiff, all dressed alike, all rustling in whispers and I couldn't help thinking that we looked like a forest of trees after a storm. I think maybe part of the purpose of our lives... a purpose we all share... is to be present as a tree in the forest, each tree standing on it's own and yet all standing together lending ourselves to shelter and strength given by the sheer force of our numbers.


The following links are, respectively:
Tim's own page with his music, his obituary, and a really cool link with the Bible verse "to everything there is a season. . . " set to music.

http://www.timstoneproject.com/id2.html

http://www.legacy.com/ohio/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=118391362

http://www.biblesociety.ca/free_scriptures/escriptures/ecclesiastes3/ecclesiastes3.html