"Every stone here is a contract. A promise that someone lived, someone was loved, and someone was left behind to pay the bill for the carving."Father Tom · Peter James Stouffer
Elias called it a landfill. Father Tom answers by opening the cemetery gate and treating the place as an archive.
The line is his counterargument to the claim that the social contract is void. He does not begin with theory. He points to names cut into stone.
Every marker records an obligation someone accepted: memory paid for, grief given shape, a life made legible enough to be kept.