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These past few days I’ve been in Cleveland, Ohio where I attended the funeral of my uncle, “Wolford” as I always called him. It’s complicated, but apparently Wolford was a favorite uncle of my dad and his brother, so when his brother became my uncle he wanted to be known as “Wolford.”

Everyone else called him Ron.

No one ever gets to spend a lot of time with family these days. Everyone moves to one corner of the country or another. Life takes us hither and yon as we follow the paths laid out before us. But it seems that I see this part of my family even more infrequently than average. We used to see them more often– when I was small, it seems to me I remember seeing them all at least once a year. We’d go to Cleveland, and play ping pong or go to the Zoo or picnic in “The Valley,” a series of interconnected public parks in Cleveland. They’d come to our home in Northern Kentucky, and we’d cook out or go to our Zoo, play ping pong. You know, just be “family” together.

Now we’re all grown up, and grown apart. We all have families, and some of our families are starting to have families. I’ve been keeping up with Uncle Wolford’s health the past few years through my dad. He’s had a number of health issues, each one a little different, each one a bit more serious. In the past few months, it got a bit worse, then he went to the hospital, and while there began to decline even more. Dad and Mom went up last week to visit, and left with some hope that he’d rally and come home. But another stroke happened, and Uncle Wolford couldn’t recover from it. At age 79, surrounded by family, awash in prayers and the love of those close to him, he died.

My brother and I drove up Monday and met up with the family there. Mom and Dad had a car-full as well. Monday night we spent time at my cousin John’s house. Everyone was there, we ate fried chicken and all the fixins, and we visited. Stories were told, memories remembered, a guitar showed up and I sat with Joe (John’s son) and showed him a few chords. John came over, and he and I did some old-guy songs for the youngsters. I learned the names of the children of my cousins, some of whom I knew only from Facebook.

Tuesday afternoon, we all gathered at the home place. Uncle Wolford’s chair stayed empty for a bit until one of his daughters sat down in it. I sat in the dining room, and while we talked I remembered being young, being a visitor, and eating a spaghetti dinner made by Ron and Beth’s girls (my cousins). I remembered staying with Ron and Beth on a visit 9 years ago, when I went up to see Paul’s future college (Oberlin) and to make a tour of the Halls of Fame in and around Cleveland (Pro Football, Rock and Roll.) I remembered a birthday spent there as a boy, when my gift was a gray reel-to-reel recorder. John, Jeanne, Rob, and I played with that thing all the rest of the time– making fake radio shows, scary shows, and just having fun with a new toy.

Tuesday night we went to the church for Ron’s (Uncle Wolford’s) memorial service. That church has been their family’s church forever and ever. Beth has been a music director there, cousin Margaret was an education minister there, and Uncle Wolford served as a treasurer there. All of my cousins sang in the choirs and played hand bells growing up there.My cousin Margaret was married there– and maybe other cousins too. I went to Margaret’s wedding, so that one I know.

And, we all were a part of Ron’s memorial service there.

I sat in the pew– an unusual experience for me. Children of my cousins read scriptures and presented memories of “Pop,” as they called him. My dad shared his memories and feelings. One of the pastors at the church shared about Ron’s competitive nature in a humorous remembrance about Ron’s career as a bowling league participant and officer. We sang some hymns, and said some prayers.

My uncle wasn’t remarkable, at least in a public-figure kind of way. He was a high school math teacher for 49 years in Cleveland’s public school system. He taught math at the local community college. He bowled. He raised a family: he taught them to play ball and run races and play chess, to eat their vegetables and go to church and to school, how to love others and take up for themselves and enjoy their lives. He had his high moments and low moments, his holy moments and his everyday moments. He had his strengths and his weaknesses. Like a billion other people, like billions of other people who have ever lived.

But sitting in the pew, listening to the memories of others and reflecting on my own; seeing the gift he gave to the world in the faces of his children and grandchildren; hearing the voices of a full congregation gathered on a hot Tuesday night to remember his life and celebrate it with his family; thinking on how many thousands of students he had helped in nearly a half-century of teaching math classes day after day. . .

Thinking on the laughter he’d shared and the tears he’d shed, the hard knocks he’d endured and the achievements he’d earned . . .

It came to me how remarkable an unremarkable life can be. How remarkable and worthy of note a life full of love and sharing really is. And how much it mattered, and to how many, that he had lived and shared his life with others.

Cousin Margaret shared with me earlier on Tuesday how in his last few days, Uncle Wolford had thought some deep and long thoughts– the kind of thoughts one thinks when one’s days are coming to an end. Looking back at his life, he wondered aloud if it had been enough– if he had done enough good, if he had spent his life well. With his hand in hers she told him, over and over–”It’s all about love, Pop. It’s all about love.”

Pretty remarkable, after all.

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