He was three years older than my mother. Shaggy haired as a youth. Tall as the trees. He was 6-foot-4 and stood with a deliberate hitch in his leg and hip. It gave him a coolness where he could lean against things or loop a thumb in his belt. He got married a few hours before I was born, a full generation apart, miles apart, not that far apart. For as long as I can remember he called me to wish me a happy birthday and I would wish him a happy anniversary. As a younger man, he was aggressive without being risky. Loud without being obnoxious. Rowdy, but never in trouble. It was a vestigial part of youth that he aged out of, as most of us do, but since he was young, and I was young, and his family was young, it all felt a little adventurous. He was mischievous, with a wicked, good-spirited glimmer in his eye. He was fast and careful. He knew when to be which. He knew a lot.
My uncle was a father, a father-figure to many, a friend of everyone he encountered. He had a lot of friends. Everyone became his friend, because for as tall as he was, his personality could be bigger, and it was full of good cheer, laced with being a merry prankster. His was a personality full of love.
Tony worked at GE, running the software that kept the factory working. Odds are he had a small hand in your kitchen. He was a shortwave radio guy. His license plate, for all my life, was his call letters. He was a volunteer firefighter. He was a handyman. He was a fisherman. He was a Godly man. He was a deacon in his church. I have a dim memory of seeing him preach once or twice. But what he really was was a song leader.
He wasn’t a teacher, but he could have been. There was always some lesson or practical explanation he could share. He knew a lot of things and he was generous with what he knew. He wasn’t a comedian, but he might have been. He delighted in making people laugh.
All of it, his good nature, his size, his generous spirit, made him the center of a room, even though he wasn’t the sort who needed that, ever.
Even in his struggles, he would steer himself to a joke. Twenty years ago, or so he got a bad diagnosis. A tremor turned into Parkinson’s. The prognosis wasn’t great, but it came at a time when those prognoses were changing. Medicines were improving, science was making leaps, and activity and the physical therapy helped him continue to enjoy life far beyond that first doctor’s projections. There were always jokes and puns and stories. They got a little slower. A bit more halting. It made us all patient, and even in that he was giving us an example, an opportunity to learn from him. It’s one of those things you might wonder if a person is aware of doing it, or if it was purely instinctive and genuine personality. Either way, it was important. There were always some of the tiniest members of his family around. There was always a trip, or a cookout, or something. This horrible thing was going on, and he was rising to meet it. While he wouldn’t deny it, he wouldn’t let it define him. At the same time, it was rough. As his body fought against him, he lost the abilities to do the sort of finer work he really enjoyed. Even then, on balance, he kept his spirits up, and that meant a lot for the people around him, and maybe for him, too.
He was always an example, whether he intended to be or not, the rest was up to us. That’s how I always saw him: he did his best for you, and around you; the rest was up to you.
At the core of his varied interests, he was a real family man. Tony had a daughter and son, a flock of grandchildren and a mess of noisy, beautiful great-grandchildren. He loved them all. The man loved everyone, and he made it obvious, and he was easy to respect and love in return.
We buried him today, the singer, the programmer, the tinkerer, teacher, prankster. The patient and enduring man. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people came to the visitation last night. Strangers from his regular breakfast haunt came. Today, more people came in, including the entirety of the people from his boxing therapy group. They, with their own troubles and struggles, all came and filled three pews. My mom always said that she thought her brother liked going to that group because there were people who understood what exactly he was facing. That may well be. They came today because of how he made them feel through what they were facing.
People from all the churches he visited, all the churches where he would go to their singings, came too. And, so, when it came time to sing the room was filled and the air beyond it, too. The songs were chosen specifically and everyone who raised their voices did so with verve. It was terribly sad, and joyful. For all of this, a good man’s suffering has ended. I hope that, where he’s gone, he can walk and run and be loud and tinker with things and be young again if he wants, even though he’d matured so well into a quiet, gentle man, a gentleman. However it works, that choir sounds better today than it did last week.
He is at rest at his church, a place I know well. I visited it a lot as a child. As kids, his children, my cousins and I, were all pretty close. I’ve always just been so grateful they would share their dad with me a little. It always meant a lot. But there was always plenty of his enthusiasm to share.
His examples and his joy and his curiosity and his enthusiasm go with us. The rest is up to us.
