Tonight NBC News reminded us of all the well known people who passed away this year, but others, little known, were just as precious to family and friends. It made me think of graveyards.

I wonder if people who turn to the end of a book take delight in graveyards. Cold, hard, gray tomb stones tell no stories. Headlines and flashing neon lights are glaringly absent. Head stones and forgotten urns indifferently advertise elusive people and their memories. Elaborate carvings and statues have no cheerful message.

Life belongs to the infrequent graveyard visitors who bring their private thoughts. Only they know if there were once smiles and laughter where a marker marks a life now gone. Flowers left behind are like memories; fragile, withering in the procession of a day, week, season. Modesty and eloquence are wasted on the dead. Whatever you had to say or do should have been said and done before the need for tombstones, urns and flowers.

Do regrets and blame, like wreaths, bouquets, flowers and everything else, wither in time, once disconnected from their source? Is guilt buried beneath the cold tombstone or is it buried deep within our breast? Does it really matter to anyone but us? Better to have no guilt at all.

Tombstones and flowers are silly band-aids and no help at all when the only one bleeding is you. Attempts to reconnect are misguided. Charlatans and deceivers, bound in their own deceit, ravage the broken hearted and turn love into a weapon. The lonely actually welcome the numbness that emptiness brings.

We live at war with the clock, but where is the clock in the graveyard? Shouldn't there be heavy, dull strokes reverberating through this quiet city? The choir is stilled and the residents are clothed in silence, but I think heavy, dull thuds would remind all visitors that the living are not that far removed from those who breathe no more. However, no timely echoes drift and haunt us unless we brought them on our own.

Do you keep the thought of graveyards at arm's length? They remind me that life is made of seasons. Seasons are like faithful sentinels who proclaim a message of truth that many choose to ignore. They remind us that a grave or urn waits for us and one day we too will pass.

Wisdom understands the only message we leave behind will be the one we've written on the hearts of others. Will we allow that message to pale in the rush to beat the clock, a clock that always wins?

I think a big heavy clock in a grave yard is a good idea. It is wasted on the dead, but it might help the living.

We choose whether or not to be in dialogue with our conscience. We choose whether or not to have a conversation with God. We choose whether or not to enter into relationships with others. The seasons, those faithful sentinels and servants of God will one day remove our ability to choose. How sad, if our choice was only us.