If you’ve lost, you felt it at McCain’s service

There’s something cathartic in listening to the stories Sen. John McCain’s friends told at his Phoenix memorial service.

If you’ve lost anyone close to you, you have been there. You have heard stories like these.

There are the ones that make you laugh.

Like Grant Woods’ description of his first day as McCain’s chief of staff, trapped in a harrowing car ride with McCain at the wheel.

And how Larry Fitzgerald explained the differences between him and McCain (“He ran for president; I run out of bounds”).

There are touching memories. Like how Fitzgerald was inspired to visit Vietnam so he could understand what his friend faced as a prisoner of war there.

Or how Joe Biden talked about the early days of their friendship, where they never talked about McCain’s POW days or the deaths of Biden’s wife and daughter.

But, most importantly, there are the reassurances that life gets better, that grief subsides and that, someday, we will see our loved ones again.

That was the part of Biden’s speech that hit me most, when he noted that you know you’re going to make it when the mention of your deceased loved one’s name brings a smile before the tears.

“The disease that took John’s life — that took our friend Ted Kennedy’s life — that took my son Beau’s life — is brutal, relentless, unforgiving,” Biden said. “It takes so much from those we love — and from the families who love them — that in order to survive we have to remember how they lived, not how they died.”

It’s true.

I did not intimately know John

McCain.

I met him a few times, which is basically enough to say that the stories told by others who knew him better aren’t just window dressing. He really was that guy.

But his memorial service brought tears to my eyes because it so beautifully summed up what it feels to grieve, to process loss, to think about how we live our lives and what, ultimately, we want our legacies to be.

If you’ve loved and lost anyone, you felt it too.

You’ve been there.

And you know Biden is right. Republican, Democrat, whatever. Doesn’t matter.

We all should be as lucky to be remembered with the warmth and grace of those who eulogized John McCain.

From left, the late Sen. John McCain’s children Jimmy, Meghan and Jack, and widow, Cindy, arrive at North Phoenix Baptist Church for Thursday morning’s memorial service.