Still trying to gather my thoughts on this one...
Something that occurred to me as I was sitting there in the sanctuary was how difficult it was wrapping ones head around the loss of someone that you only see in person on an infrequent basis. The pain and the immediate sense of loss on the part of his family was evident, and very different from the more hypothetical sense of loss that I felt.
Sitting there looking at Alan's picture on the table next to the box containing his ashes, it finally started to break through to me that when we all Gather next month, he won't be there to join us. That hurts.
But despite that, it was an amazing experience to learn more about Alan the brother and uncle, rounding out our picture of Alan the fellow train enthusiast. It's a shame that it takes something like this to learn "the rest of the story" about our fellow forum members. His family is a wonderful group of people that very graciously welcomed us in. Having heard so much about us, they were as eager to hear about our recollections of Alan and learn more about this side of Alan's life. They are also amazingly talented, the same brother in law that related the story above is a heck of a singer in the church's praise band, and his niece played and amazing piece on the marimba.
All said, I can't think of a better way to have spent a day. It was an honor to be able to do so, and a pleasure to see some friendly faces a little bit sooner than I had planned.
I'll leave you with a video of the last song at the service. The church band (all of whom were amazing) prepared this for tomorrow's service, and at the last minute realized that the train theme made it perfect for his service and included it.