With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;

Ephesians 4:2

And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.

Colossians 3:14

I’ve made every phone call, some three pages of names and numbers of friends and family and churches.

We’ve taken care of all the details that anyone can think of and dozens more.

I’ve vacuumed floors twice and scrubbed hardwoods on my hands and knees more than once.

I’ve made slideshows and PowerPoints and created alternate file formats and backups and hidden Plans C and D, two Plan Es and a Plan F.

I’ve run out of things to do and I’m dizzy and sick about it.

This has gone on for so long, and moved by so fast. But we’re in one of those places where time doesn’t mean a lot, I suppose. The only time that matters is the time you don’t get, the time to hug a little tighter and hold a little longer.

My heart is broken for my grandfather and the little tiny shards that are left are shaved off into dust for my mother and my uncle and after that there are just the particles that won’t form any cohesive bond for this amazing, profound, fathomless grief.

I see the woman who pretty much hung the moon in every corner of her home. I hear her laugh in my head and I’ve been listening to the tone of the nuances of her voice in my imagination. I walk into rooms in her home and turn on a light and expect to see her there. She. Should. Be. Right. There.

And this is all very personal, and I’m sorry, but, just for a while, do me this favor, please: Send a little thought for my folks for some peace and rest and that little bit of human grace we have to always remember the wonderful things we’ve known. It helps fill up the cracks that don’t mend.

And then, for yourself: Hug and kiss and annoy and harass the people that you love just a bit more than you normally do. Tell them one of the stories you share that always makes them laugh. Put on a mischievous smile, break your diet and have dessert with them. Let the words you say to them today be the really important ones.

The house was a whirling fury, at times, and that was what she liked, at times.

An old man took the turn into the driveway hesitantly. He parked, pushed against the car door with all his might and shuffled his body of old bones up the long drive. It was maybe 15 feet. I met him at the door, worried he would have trouble negotiating the two steps to the porch.

He said he almost didn’t drive anymore, but he had to get in the car and come down for a visit. His wife had cut my grandmother’s hair for years. He’d cut my grandfather’s. And they, he said, always had a friend in him. You had to speak up, he said as he pointed to his hearing aid, he’d left that in the war with General George Patton. And he and his wife of more than 70 years thought the world of my family.

A woman stopped by who just loved them to pieces. She is my mother’s age, one of the dozens of kids that were raised through this house. It must have been a sight to see. She promised me great tales on my mother, my uncle and my grandparents. We will schedule a day to dish dirt.

And that was the way it went. Food came in all day, from people you knew and names you’d heard and people you couldn’t pick out of a lineup. People stayed and hugged and laughed and left and more people came and hugged and laughed. Stories were told and laughs were shared and I heard of memories that explain basic things, like the way particular words are said in my family, that I’d never heard before.

People to see, people to fuss over. That was the tenor and tone and almost always the expectation. People to tell her stories to and to grimace and laugh with. People to feed and send them on their way so they could come back by again.

It was an almost perfect whirling fury. Almost. Almost, and far from it.

I have always been blessed with great women in my life, women who took seriously the task of shaping me as I grew.

I lost one of them unexpectedly today. To me, she always had an out-sized personality. She was full of life and laughter and hugs and hospitality. She was warm and welcoming and wonderful. She could scarcely go anywhere in her town without seeing someone she knew. And if she didn’t know the people she saw it always felt that she soon might. She was stubborn and lovely. She had an abiding sense of fair play, and she delighted in practical jokes and the telling of them. Oh, but she enjoyed telling stories.

So I will tell a story about her.

A few years ago some friends of ours had a newborn pass away just before the holidays. Lauren and I are also friends with both sets of the grandparents. As life sorted itself out one set of those grandparents had no one with which to spend their Thanksgiving. I asked if these friends, grieving grandparents, could spend the day with us.

“I don’t see why not,” she said with a tone suggesting there wasn’t any other answer you should expect.

And so it was that she spent one of the most important days of the year ministering with food and laughing and hugging and crying with people who were, until that day, perfect strangers, but were now a perfect part of the family.

I believe at the end of the night she sent them home with big hugs and more food, as was her custom.

Her last few years had been a challenge for her, but her spirit was so often strong and full of the vigor that we always knew.

That was the case when I saw her last, just a few days ago. I am glad for that brief amount of time I was able to spend with her recently, though I wish for more. I am glad for the great trip she recently took, an international adventure with her daughter and son-in-law and his mother.

I am glad to have had her for so long, though all of these years were not nearly long enough to see her smile or watch her make other people laugh. I am glad that she was ours, that she could light a room with her voice and that she could change your day with just her personality. I’m glad for all of the trips we took and for the silly things we did and for all of the stories she told on me. I am glad for all of the great memories she helped make for me. I’m glad for all of the things, big and small, that she told to me over the years. I’m glad to know her favorite hymn. She just said it as a simple statement in between songs at church one day, but it seemed profoundly personal and conspiratorial to me and I find that today it is a great help, knowing that song and agreeing with her about it.

Now I just long to learn every other thing she never told me and to tell her a few more dozen times how important and wonderful she was. I’d like to tell her how doubly fortunate I am, to have, with her, never wanted for anything, and to know that statement to be a lifetime’s gospel.

I’d like to tell her that I have always been blessed with great women in my life, women who took seriously the task of shaping me as I grew. I’d like to tell her how thankful I am that my grandmother was an inexplicably big part of that good fortune.