My Great-Aunt Ina Mae died last weekend at age 85 and I went to the funeral yesterday. This was truly a funeral like no other I’ve ever attended, but then again, Aunt Ina Mae was also like no other.

Aunt Ina Mae always had a joke, and knew how to tell it. She loved poetry and always had a poem to quote (but never a sad one). Her vocabulary was remarkable, and she devoured crosswaord puzzles and quiz shows. If she had been able to go to college, she would have made a very fine professor of English literature. But Ina Mae graduated from high school in the middle of the 30s, and even if it had been socially acceptable for women from the hills of Monroe County, Ohio to go to college, the economics of the times conspired against that option.

So, she did what many talented women of her era did – she married a good man and together they lived a full life. They lived in a beautiful home in the Portage Lakes area of Akron, just off one of the lakes. They delighted in giving tours of their home, and pointing out the wood finishing. They could tell you not only what kind of wood it was but where that wood came from, because they bought the trees and finished it themselves.

Summers were spent in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in a cabin in the middle of a lake accessible only by boat. After her husband, Mac, retired, you could often find them in the basement workshop, which they sold at shows and gave away to friends and family. The ones that I remember most were wooden plaques with nails driven in of various sizes in a pattern to look like flowers in a pot and painted bright colors. Half of a small flower pot or a large spool of thread was glued to the bottom for the flower pot.

Aunt Ina Mae was always right whether she was right or not. She had no qualms about expressing her opinion, and loved to argue, and was likely not to concede defeat even if it was clear she was wrong.

So, we had a great sendoff for Ina Mae at the funeral home in Woodsfield. My dad had promised about 10 years ago when Mac died that he would do Ina Mae’s funeral, and so the family arranged to have him and Mom flown up from Florida for the service. He decided that the way Ina Mae would want us to be remembered was with stories and laughter, and so, he asked members of the family and friends to write their memories of her. We told jokes and funny stories about Ina Mae, and her granddaughter and daughter read some poetry. Her grandson did a funny bit about her calling him from heaven on his cellphone, sort of a Bob Newhart-esque riff.

After the graveside service, I overheard the funeral director telling my dad that he’d never seen a funeral quite like it. And, in conservative Woodsfield, Ohio, I’m sure he never had. The next time he gets together with the other funeral directors, he’s got a great story to tell. But my Aunt Ina Mae was bigger than what they usually do in Woodsfield, Ohio – and would have been had she lived there her entire life.

It strikes me that sometimes in this culture we often fail to recognize that a funeral should celebrate the life of the person being mourned. We pipe in somber organ music and focus on the tragedy instead of honoring a life well-lived.

Sometime this weekend, I’m going to pull out my Norton anthology and read some Tennyson and think about Aunt Ina Mae. And I know that she’ll be smiling in heaven to see me do it.