by Chris Wood
We are here today to celebrate Tom being an important spiritual and emotional element of those who have had the joy of being part of his life.
I will offer a few insights observed over decades with Tom, which I think are more important than listing the wonderful and sometimes wild experiences we enjoyed together.
Tom and I met in the corporate environment of The Travelers in Los Angeles, when he was on the upward ascent of sales/marketing leadership in institutional finance.
This street wise, intellectual equal of his college peers at Trinity College, was cocky, yet guarded. By his late 20s, he was sharpening those interpersonal skills he’d employ subsequently in his professional success.
But I detected edges that he had to hone. Most especially was Tom’s inability to suffer fools gladly, except one, when he allowed me in which allowed us to connect in a special way for us both.
As we crafted a relationship, he realized I offered a safe harbor to open up to his inner concerns. He felt comfort in our space to discuss vulnerability and imperfection. Quite a gift he gave me.
At that point in time and continuing after we both moved back East, Tom brought me into his family circle here in West Hartford, with the family there and the ever growing extended family at the summer home in Rhode Island, after he married Mary and grew their own set of little McGs.
Having that second family was another gift Tom bestowed upon me over the years. There was no doubt he was generous with the wealth he earned over his professional career, but I think his generosity of soul, as exampled in that inclusion, was far more important.
And this went both ways. While coincidentally in Los Angeles on business while working in NYC, Tom visited the hospital on the UCLA campus where my daughter Alexandra was born in the early morning before his business appointments. He reveled in my joy of becoming a father and a more mature man. Later, he sponsored Alex at her Confirmation ceremony.
But ours wasn’t always a smooth interaction within a joy of commonality. We verbally jousted vociferously on politics and social issues, in a variety of venues. But no matter how heated was our discussion, we would eventually burst out laughing, appreciating in an unspoken manner that we each wanted goodness to prevail as an end, although via different paths.
Tom was fascinated by my arcane perceptions of life and spiritualism formed in a Catholic grammar school in the pre-Vatican Two era, and then via theology and philosophy courses at a Catholic undergraduate school in post-Vatican Two.
Such an experience could make one either blindly devoted or cynically observant of such an earthly entity, or for some, just walk away from the experience. He told me that he found it interesting that I could so comfortably live within the mystical aspects of the Church, without much interest in rote devotion.
As Tom increased his thirst to establish a contentment in religious practice, he queried my own spiritual journey as he became more interested in deepened spirituality, which I saw helped him mature as a person.
Especially over the last few years, he seemed interested in finding his core being, open to a bigger, truer, more loving God. I believe that he has found that in the place he now resides.
No other trait I saw at Tom’s core was deeper than his interest in others: family, friends, and humanity in general. His dreams of late as a “retired” professional was to find ways to lessen the suffering of others with the current tools available in the 21st century and push toward discoveries yet to come.
I’ll live with sorrow for a requisite period of time, not because Tom passed, but because he was so much of a continued source of my learning, understanding and growing my own life.
Tom and I didn’t talk every day, or every week, but when we did, it was as if we put our previous conversation on hold for just a few minutes before resuming. We jumped into and through topics as if we would burst if we didn’t at least bring them up. I’ll miss those myriad subjects we were able to fit into a phone call or upon our visits, although those memories will be like having bees in my head.
Ultimately though, always around the edge of those conversations was our struggle to better learn the essence of God’s meaning for being human — how to figure out actions of help in which to offer our talents.
That said, I’ll not lose Tom. Instead, I’ll look forward to the insights he’ll continue to offer me in those “thin places,” as the Celts would say. Those times and places that pierce the physical and the spiritual worlds, such as when falling asleep, coming awake at dawn, and during times of contemplation and meditation.
Also, I will actively seek Tom in my dark psychological aloneness and disquiet, seeking his comfort as our souls will never be apart. Tom will live forever in the solitude of my heart. I truly believe my Guardian Angel now has competition in looking out for me.
Finally, we should not grieve forever. A short time, yes, to stop and take stock in what was offered to us. But then after that, Tom would want us to take a deep breath and embrace life heartily before carrying on finding the way to employ our unique talents usefully.
These next lines seemed to come from nowhere as I wrote them down, but I like to believe Tom was whispering them into my subconscious:
Understand that our personal world is constantly changing.
Therefore, it is important to learn who we are deep inside
So we can be bold when straining with that change.
Realize that ultimately, it is not about self that we do it,
But for being in this world for others.
I will continue to love you, Tommy, knowing I will think about you every time I write my full name with “Thomas” in the middle. I look forward to the time (hopefully not too soon) that I’ll be with you again when I reach Heaven.
Love,
Christopher Thomas Wood
Thomas E. McGowan 
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