4. A Companion Of The Dead
"I also have a self appointed job as a churchyard keeper in which I look after the dead near my house... You dont know whether they were happy or what their last words were, and some of whats written, well its downright lies! When they say not dead, only sleeping well! I had my Honda mower near a fellows head yesterday and he definitely wasnt sleeping, let me tell you."
Any extended interview with Tom, from whatever period in his life, usually comes round to the subject of death. Tom has never been afraid to broach the subject but the thought of it is one of those sources of anxiety that he refuses to shy away from. Tom believes that his obsession with human mortality was down to his Catholic upbringing.
I was brought up among Irish pubs and Irish priests and brainwashed with this preoccupation with death. Which is perhaps why I still like to wander around graveyards collecting strange epitaphs. From the age of five I was constantly at confession until I dried up of sins to confess."
Perhaps his unusual response to such morbidity, frequenting cemeteries and tending to the graves of strangers, is a way of externalising those inner demons. In recent years Tom has supported his local hospice and faces his fear by visits to patients. Movingly he tells the story of one such encounter.
Im a bit apprehensive about dying and in a hospice everyone dies, but one particular room I was taken into, one darling old lady who was going to die and she saw me and rallied slightly from the grip of death and smiled and said fancy seeing you here, she thought she had gone to heaven I suppose and I was the greeter. These things reassured me and I was invigorated by them. (The Fourth Doctor Time Capsule)
Tom has also spoken on several occasions of his sense of powerlessness when he was once asked to speak to a young boy in a coma. He now reluctantly accepts that for the parents his presence and words made a difference, even if the boy himself was unable to show any signs of recognition.