Notes for Tom Hughes's Funeral Homily: University of Virginia Chapel, 6 April 2014

摘要

In the last decade or so a surprising theory for identifying early human life on an archaeological site began gathering attention in some scholarly circles. It treats the remains of flowers at a burial site as more compelling evidence of humanity than finding tools on the site. Beauty offered to memorialize someone who has died as sacred and beloved may run more deeply human than the ability to set goals and marshal resources to achieve them. Twice I talked with Tom about the place of beauty in terrible goodbyes. The first conversation happened one spring morning near the end of my first year at Penn. I had turned back my M.A. exam book unopened, telling the proctor that I would work this out later with the department. I wandered across campus and found myself knocking on Tom's office door. I only knew him a little then. "Bill died about 5:30 this morning," I said, "we sat all night with him." Bill Moody was a Jesuit with whom I lived; he was thirty-four like me when he died of peritonitis after diverticular surgery. I was heartsick and exhausted. Tom got up from behind the big desk in his office and went to make us tea. We sat at the tea table in front of the desk and talked about Bill's death that morning, and he told me about the death of his young son. We talked about losing someone too young, that terrible grief. That was, I think, when we began to be friends.