who knows, maybe Tom isn't really dead.... Maybe he has 9 lives like Mikhail or can mysteriously heal himself like Locke???? I do hate to see him go. He seemed to be the only other who was helpful at all, besides, Richard - a little.

Richard was helpful? Who was he helpful to? (Wait, "to whom was he helpful"??? That doesn't sound right...)

to locke, he showed locke the file on sawyer so that locke would get sawyer to kill his dad

Towards the end we were shown that Tom was a fun loving guy. Who, like a lot of the others, thought he was doing the right thing by listening to Ben. It would have been nice to hear a little more about what motivated him to obey, but I feel that is info we'll learn even without Tom around.

Tom tried to show Jack that he wasn't such a bad guy, he was just following Ben's orders because of his belief in "jacob". ...