Today was one of those days where life reaches down into your calendar and reminds you that there are bigger priorities than the ones you’ve scrawled on your schedule. I went to a funeral today. It was the funeral of my uncle Ralph, not a blood uncle but the husband of one of my mother’s sisters. In terms of our family tree, this leaves but one survivor standing – also an uncle by marriage – in his generation.

Ralph was a plain, cheerful, energetic man who seemed to have discovered the fountain of youth until almost the very end. He worked as a telephone lineman, one of those guys who climb the poles at any time of the day, in any kind of weather. He owned every hand tool known to man, and his eidetic memory knew precisely where they could be located (often in the trunk of his car). If somebody needed something fixed, it was his great joy to jump in and help – and he knew how to do it right, too.

I don’t recall ever hearing a word said against Ralph. He lived into his 90s.

I must confess I was late to the funeral. My brain was absolutely convinced that to travel 2 ½ hours and arrive at 10:00 a.m., I needed to set out around 8:30. The logic of this calculation seems just as unassailable to me as it is wrong in reality.

I’ve done this sort of thing before. I don’t know what my problem is. Certainly it must be partly due to my functional innumeracy. Also I blame my difficulty in visualizing spatial relationships. I need to teach myself (even at this advanced age) to sit down and draw a clock face, and then shade in the hours, when I’m planning a trip.

On the drive I listened to the audiobook of Klavan’s When Christmas Comes. Almost wished the drive was longer.

The same goes for life.