[Verse 1]
He came into this world with iron in his spine and soft in his hands,
A man who learned to carry more than any blueprint plans,
He built his life like someone laying bricks before the frost,
Measuring every word he kept and tallying what it cost,
The stories lived inside his chest, too deep to speak out loud,
A quiet kind of thunder rolling underneath the clouds,

[PreChorus]
He held the ones he loved like shelter holds the rain,
A steady kind of giving that he never stopped to name,

[Chorus]
Tom, you were the foundation nobody praised,
The table that was set, the house that someone raised,
Tom, every hand you steadied, every debt you paid in full,
The whole of who you were was never small, was always whole,

[Verse 2]
He kept his feelings filed in some internal, ordered drawer,
Not because the love was less but love ran deeper than the floor,
He'd fix the broken latch, remember every detail said,
Hold a conversation from a decade past inside his head,
His heart was like a ledger written careful, line by line,
Every entry made with patience, column after column, fine,

[PreChorus]
He gave devotion like a craftsman gives his trade,
Returning every morning to the promise that he made,

[Chorus]
Tom, you were the kind of man who didn't need applause,
Who showed up in the doing, never paused to check for cause,
Tom, every room you entered held a little more of grace,
The whole wide world is different for the time you took your place,

[Verse 3]
The day the house went quiet and the air forgot to move,
Something left this ordinary world without a groove,
He'd carried deep and hidden waters, fathomless and still,
The kind that keep on flowing long after the river's filled,
A daughter holds the proof of him in everything she tends,
A man like Tom doesn't stop at where the breathing ends,

[PreChorus]
He crossed some unseen threshold where the weary find their rest,
But everything he planted here still rises in our chest,

[Chorus]
Tom, you were the oath that held beneath the hardest year,
The voice that talked through problems till the answer became clear,
Tom, all the love you fashioned out of patience and of will,
Is breathing in the ones you left, and it's breathing still,

[Bridge]
When the harvest month begins and the heat begins to break,
She'll feel him in the stillness at the edges of the lake,
Not gone but woven somewhere in the fabric of the days,
A man who built his whole life up and never sought the praise,

[Outro]
Rest now, Tom, the work is done, the ledger's finally clear,
Every line you gave to others echoes, year to year,