Here’s essentially the version that I read at Ron’s funeral. I was happy to be part of the celebration of a wonderful life, but I truly wish his time had not come. Amazing to know how loved he was, and I was a tiny planet in a good man’s orbit.

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I really don’t know how to feel, so I did the only thing I ever learned to do. I wrote. Badly, maybe. Thoughtfully, possibly. With futility, definitely.

The closest I ever had to a father figure left this mortal coil. A true mensch, a sensitive soul, my uncle Ron died.

I thought about writing a euphemism for died, but for all the poets, madmen and philosophers seeking the truth, I couldn’t do it. Ron was the first person I ever met who talked about the Beats–Ginsburg, Kerouac, Burroughs. For all of them, the word is death, and today it’s Ron’s word, too.

The thing I remember about Ron is that he was the first grown up that spoke to me like an adult. I remember real conversations, or rather they were very real to me. Given that I was about 6 years old and he was in his 20s, his mileage no doubt varied on what he got from the dialogs.

I dogeared and wore thin the pages of a picture book he gave me way back when, called “That Mean Man.” It was its non-treacly story and non-kiddie flavor that made it long a favorite after I was past picture books. It traveled to college and crisscrossed various moves. I regret not knowing where it landed.

When I heard the news, I went home to find a tiny gift I never gave Ron over the couple of Christmases we didn’t return East. I meant to give him a small badge from the Beat Museum in San Francisco. Long before I ever moved west, North Beach existed in my imagination. Ron’s love for books and the Beats taught me where City Lights Bookstore and the Condor club are, and I hoped that someday he’d visit and see for himself. I picked up the pins from the museum for Ron, proclaiming Ginsberg –“Holy! Holy! Holy!” and “Starving Hysterical Naked.” Now they will hold a place of remembrance on my desk.

Coincidentally, Nancy told me a story about my father and his influence on her as a kid that I thought I could have said about Ron. My father was someone who tried the new, bringing gadgets and food to Nancy’s Dorchester, a neighborhood not known for exploration. Ron was that to me in my suburban world. Nancy and Ron were my perception of the 60s and 70s counterculture.

Ron read books that raised eyebrows and listened to rock. He spoke to me and my siblings and his high school students like a real person, including innuendo and jokes. He admitted to having inhaled way before it was asked of presidential candidates. Ron was the adult who argued the virtues of “Exile on Main Street” and “Beggars Banquet” above all other Stones albums. He was jazz records and quoting postmodern analysis of just about anything. He was the babysitter not knowing how to handle an unruly brood of five letting my brothers smoke a novelty cigar. He was nerdy passion for books, art and music in equal measure to a passion for sports.

Ron and Nancy were Newbury Street in the 60s, urban life and walks in the Public Garden to feed the ducks after reading “Make Way for Ducklings.” I met my first hippies and interracial couples and a gay man through them. I tried new foods, like the exotic pita bread suddenly appearing on store shelves next to the Wonder Bread, and got to sip wine.

Ron was also after school adventures and schemes with Pat, my mother, as they both used their school teacher afternoons pretty well.

There is a part of the non-conformist me that I think I owe to both of them back in those afternoons. I learned about shy adults with passions bubbling under the surface. Early on I talked about writing with Ron, a closet writer who said his stuff wasn’t good enough to see the light of day. I am certain that he was wrong.

Perhaps most of all, Ron taunted a kind of affection and sensitivity in me, giving me the hugs that were not second nature in my family and speaking out loud about feelings. I modeled behavior that he showed and eventually I’ve gotten better. Ron and Nancy were the most couple-y couple in my world as a kid.

Now, I use their “take care” as a goodbye (which actually works pretty well in California.)

That’s all I have right now, and it’s not nearly enough. Maybe instead, I’ll just re-read Ginsberg, and remember a teacher who opened up my world and heart to the life I have now. Ron is Holy! Holy! Holy!