Max Ziegler died June 7th. He was 87 years old. He was also my cousin, someone I feel like I’ve known all my life. We didn’t hang out a lot together, there was an 18 year gap in our ages, and my first hazy memory of him is at his wedding when he married my cousin Carol. I think I was 8.
Carol and Max had three sons, and periodically as we were all growing up they’d come to our house or we’d go to theirs, mostly for holiday meals. But what I remember most about those days when they visited us is while all the adults were talking around the kitchen table, Max was down at the lake with his three boys fishing for sunfish off the shore.
Spending time with his kids was his all time favorite thing to do.
In fact moments like those are the majority of my memories of Max — thoroughly engaged with his children and grandchildren, laughing with friends and family.
He had the biggest smile.
He and I were both branch managers at banks when I was a young adult. He always had a story to tell about life at the bank, but his stories seemed more fun than my experiences. I know now that it wasn’t that our jobs were that different, it’s just that he saw his job as more joyful than I ever imagined mine could be.
That’s how he viewed the world. Joyfully. And he spread it around wherever he went.
He stayed active as a volunteer until almost the end, at Meals on Wheels and at the Kiwanis thrift shop. There’s a whole community he built around sharing his joy and you could see it in the sons and grandchildren that spoke at his funeral, and in the members of his beloved Kiwanis club who also spoke. You saw the joy that was Max in the almost 200 people that packed the funeral home on a Monday afternoon.
And as I left the service I looked up at the electric blue sky filled with puffy white clouds and I smiled. Because I knew Max was smiling too. I’m sure there was a huge crowd up there joyfully welcoming him home.
As they said at the service, the best way we can honor this incredible man is to live our own lives with joy. And to spread it around in a Max-like fashion. One of his youngest granddaughters told us the world would be a better place if it had more Maxes.
So let’s see if we can make that happen, let’s spread the joy just like Max did for all of his 87 years.
Change Is Hard 