The fabric of our lives

The telephone call came Tuesday night.

We’d had some illness in the family lately — pretty serious stuff, and there had been a few phone calls bringing bad news.

And Tuesday’s call was another, bringing news of a death.

But it was for someone different. Not the person who had been sick, but for my uncle, one of my father’s younger brothers.

Although he had reached a ripe old age, he had been in relatively good health, and it was just supposed to be a minor surgery.

But things went wrong, horribly wrong, and now he was gone.

The shock reverberated through the family. Phone calls and texts and, yes, Facebook messages, flew as we tried to process the news.

And then came the funeral plans. I looked at my weekend, which was filled with job obligations and family plans, and the dozens of things that need to be done at home every Saturday.

But I went to Michigan.

My sister and I headed east, just ahead of the snow that dumped onto northwest Indiana Friday night.

And we weren’t alone. We are a spread-out family, but many of us headed for Michigan, a son from South Carolina, a cousin from Minnesota, and another cousin all the way from Washington state.

We cried and laughed, grieved and shared memories.

We caught up on each other’s news, a coming grandchild, health concerns and how big all the children were getting.

We held each other close as we sent my uncle home in a funeral he would have loved, with lots of Bible verses, strong preaching, a tearful eulogy and hymns that shook the rafters — “On Eagle’s Wings,” “Abide with Me,” and “Jesus Loves Me.”

We stood close as we followed the hearse through the bitter cold to the small rural cemetery across from the church, clutching our coats closer as the minister committed my uncle’s remains to the earth.

And finally, after we shared a meal at the church, we watched as my uncle’s only great-grandchild tottered from one pair of loving arms to another, a gentle reminder that life does go on.