I have a relatively large family in Atlanta. We’re now working on our sixth generation of cousins since my great-grandfather moved here from Kentucky with his bride in 1882 to open a law practice. We get together often at parties, weddings and – lately it seems – a lot of funerals. A few weeks ago, we attended the funeral of my uncle, Hughes Spalding Schroder. It turned out to be a rather remarkable experience.

We go to funerals to honor the person who has left us and to show support to the immediate family in their time of grief. But it helps us mark the milestones in life with a bit of ceremony and tradition. And sometimes, such as at Uncle Hughes’ funeral, we come away with an unexpected source of inspiration.

Hughes was, above all, a gracious gentleman. He died a day or two short of his 76th birthday. We thought perhaps he was holding on for that. But that would have been too self-centered a goal for him. Instead, Hughes had been waiting to celebrate his 51st wedding anniversary with his wife, Frances. Their youngest daughter, Mary, marveled at how they continued to flirt with each other until the end. How Hughes would light up whenever Frances entered the room. When Hughes reached that celebrated anniversary, he honored his family and his bride by telling them how much he loved them and then he moved on.

It wasn’t until he died that his friends, co-workers and relatives gathered around each other to swap stories and realized a fantastic fact about the man: there went a rare soul who never said a bad word about anyone. Thinking back about conversations with Hughes, we realized he had always kept the focus on the person with whom he was talking, asking questions about our work, our family or our interests. He would only talk about himself if asked, and then only briefly. Soon he would steer the conversation back towards others. When asked by the funeral home if they wanted a story in the Atlanta newspapers, his family said no, that it wasn’t his style to draw attention to himself.

As one person after another tried to sum up Hughes’ life into a few words, they all came individually to the same observation. Frances confirmed it after thinking of all of their time together: “I never heard him say a bad word about anyone in 51 years!”. It takes a remarkable level of selflessness and self-confidence to remain true to such a graceful goal. And not to wonder if anyone would ever notice the effort you spent over a lifetime.

But that, really, is the most sincere gift of all. To give to others without expecting recognition for it. To find joy in the giving itself. For many of us who will scurry about this month, buying and wrapping presents for others in hopes they will appreciate the effort we went through to get it, it would be akin to delivering the presents without a card saying whom they were from. It would be as if we never told our kids there wasn’t a Santa. In fact, when I was a child and began to piece together a theory that there might not be a Santa, my father asked if I wanted to talk with Santa on the phone to allay my concerns. Years later, I found out who he had called: Hughes.

So, in the end, Hughes did not know if we ever noticed. May he rest assured we did. And took inspiration from not only the joy he gave each of us in hundreds of small conversations over the years, but in his remarkable challenge to us all to speak well of others – always. Why shouldn’t we do the same? And give to others what he gave to us: a gift of a lifetime.

Two years ago this month, I was sleeping late. I had just published the first issue of Atlanta 30306 and was recovering from three all-nighters earlier in the month. The phone rang.

The call was from either a brother or a sister. I don’t remember which now. My dad had been walking down the hallway at the Northside YMCA on Roswell Road going to his daily swimming aerobics class when he had massive stroke.

I drove quickly to Piedmont Hospital and ran in the emergency room. I thought about how dad had cared for me there through broken bones, an appendectomy, and so on. Now, I was going to see him.

I found him in a room, unconscious. It was so quiet. I just stood by his side, helplessly. A nurse I hadn’t seen standing in the corner told me I could touch him.

“Touch him?” I thought. “How?” I looked at his hands. I remembered grasping them in handshakes for years. I remembered how later, after our family discovered affection, hugging him, and even in recent year, kissing him. But I had no memory of ever just holding his hand, as a child might grab a parent’s hand to cross the street.

I placed his hand in mine and just held it. It felt so large; bony, yet soft. “Why have I never done this before,” I thought. Was it my insecurities, or his? Perhaps both. It was the last time I touched my father. He never regained consciousness and died later that evening.

I revisit that image often and have drawn much comfort from remembering that simple act of holding hands with my dad during the last hours of his life. A seemingly small gesture, but one that allows two people to connect so quickly, so closely.

My own 11-year-old son knows this and is thankfully not bound by the inhibitions of earlier generations. One time, after my dad’s death, I was walking in a mall with him and his cousin of the same age. His cousin asked him why he was holding my hand. He said nothing, but quickly released my grasp. “That was it,” I thought. The defining moment. Even though I had felt a little self-conscious holding his hand there in the mall, I knew I would miss his touch more than he would ever know. Yet, a few weeks later during another weekend together, he quietly slipped his hand in mine. I felt connected again.

This summer in Paris we walked along the Seine as I led him and his 13-year-old sister to cathedrals and museums. He grabbed my hand and we walked together for several blocks. My daughter, who had stopped holding my hand at age nine or 10, sped up and looked over at the clasp. I knew she was going to say something as only a sister, much too cool for such a display, would. Then she caught my eye and my smile. Uncharacteristically, she retreated and said nothing.

And so we continued along the river bank, a family of three, she comfortable in her detachment, my son content with his innate instinct to connect with others, and me, somewhere in between.
Sometimes we have a choice of when to let go. Sometimes we don’t.

A few weeks ago, my mother decided it was time to clean out the attic. She knew the only way to do this was in two steps: 1.) schedule a crew to take everything away and, 2.) invite her sons and daughters to dinner the night before to take what they wanted under pressure of a deadline.

One sister found a pellet gun that had been given to her son one Christmas. It had been “lost” in the attic a daly later when it was determined he was too young for it. One brother found an old .22 rifle “borrowed” from his camp days. We also discovered my late dad’s shotgun. And all this time, I thought we were that rare Southern family without guns!

My mother uncovered some silver bowls she thought had been stolen long ago. Another brother claimed some rarely used luggage and some college-era souvenirs. I found a box full of old newspapers I had collected in 1976 in my fanatical following of Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign. I can’t quite remember why I kept all the papers. Mabe I thought they would be of use to a future Jimmy Carter museum. Maybe I thought I’d write a book about Jimmy and the media. Perhaps I thought they’d help me remember that heady summer when my friend, Charles, his brother, Mitch, and I cruised down to Plains and then wormed our way through the Big Apple at the Democratic convention. We didn’t have credentials, tickets or even a hotel room. We crashed on their dad’s hotel room floor and made ourselves at home in New York.

We snuck into a $1,000-a-person reception on top of the World Trade Center and a private cocktail party at a seven-story brownstone owned by one of the Democratic Rockefeller widows. We slipped away to her fourth-floor squash court to have a private party.

Finally, we slipped into the convention for Jimmy’s acceptance speech. Afterwards, we took a cab back to the hotel, paid the fare and stepped toward the sidewalk. A limousine pulled up in front of us, blocking our path. Suddenly the right back door opened and out popped Jimmy. We tried to be casual as we shook his hand and told him that we particularly enjoyed the evening’s remarks and wished him well in November.

Back in my mother’s attic, it was time to go home. As we turned to leave my brother pulled back one last blanket and there found the trunk that I had taken to camp in 1969 and quickly hidden in the attic when I returned. The top was adorned with photographs clipped from my counselor’s Playboy magazine. I had not seen these beautiful (clothed) women in more than 25 years, yet somehow I recognized them instantly as old friends whom I and my seven cabin-mates stared at every night for our long weeks in those long hot Carolina nights.

I’d like to think that in 25 years, someone will uncover a pile of old Atlanta 30306’s and remember an intown community of great restaurants, coffee houses, galleries, bars, shops, salons, homes and – most of all – people. An eclectic mix of creative caring people scattered over the hills east of Piedmont Park and west of Emory University. A postage stamp of a place we chronicle each month in a zip code and a newspaper named Atlanta 30306.

Or they could save a lot of trouble and just give me a call. I’m sure I’ll have them in my attic.