I looked at Cale’s beer, and suddenly found myself 10 years old and racing up the steep hill overlooking the Bureau Creek, my swimsuit dripping wet from playing in the brown water.

Uncle Wayne’s cabin set atop this 40-foot drop—the cliff my dad once drove a lawn mower off. Dad helped him with yard work and cutting down trees. And we, my sisters and I, would go wading and fishing, once even floating on rafts down the creek, whose shallow beds scraped our bottoms in places.

And afterwards, when it was dark, we’d towel off and put on dry clothes, and Dad and Wayne would drink Miller Light from those now-retro cans.

Maybe some people would have negative feelings that a beer can reminds me of my now-deceased uncle. The uncle who’s memorial service was held at the town bar where his wedding reception had been five years earlier, his first and only wedding. The uncle who we all, even Gibson, who doesn’t drink, toasted with a shot of whiskey before sharing stories about him. Mine started with, “Can we just get real for a second? To me, Uncle Wayne will always be the man who made letters with his poop.”

So maybe a can of Miller Light isn’t fancy. Maybe saluting our dead uncle with a shot of whiskey wasn’t fancy. But for the man who was married in a Hawaiian shirt, it suited. With Uncle Wayne, there was no pretense.

He was a little rough, honestly. He kind of scared me when I was a kid. He joked too hard, and my sensitive self didn’t like it. And you could tell he was annoyed by us kids.

When we grew up a little more, he genuinely liked us. My sister plays the cello, and Wayne would send her Yo-Yo Ma CDs. She burned him discs of herself playing, there at the end. He also gave each niece and nephew a laptop when they graduated high school. And my freshman year he gave me his Canon Rebel, because he overheard me telling my mom I wanted a camera like that some day. Just asked if I wanted that one, and gave it to me.

He loved to see people pursue their passions. I understood this last fall, reflecting on this man’s too-short life. And this was beautiful.

I appreciate him all the more when I’m sitting in a room full of loud talkers and squirmy kids. Annoying. But family. The Miller Light makes even more sense.