We who toil in newsrooms routinely hear the spin of political and marketing mavens and regularly cover tragedies.

As a result, we develop a caustic sense of humor and outlook on life.

It relieves the tension and keeps the absurdity at bay.

So it was a good tonic for me this week to participate in two events unrelated to the daily hustle.

One was a simple visit with friends; the other a funeral.

A lesson distilled from both is the importance of staying tethered to the people you love.

The visit with friends was simple.

 For the first time in months, my wife, her hound and I drove from our west Napa redoubt to Second Avenue, deep in the wilds of Coombsville.

Must have been four, maybe five miles, but we made it unscathed.

Once there we were greeted warmly, ate an apple off the tree, chased a chicken around the yard and just yammered for an hour.

Good friends, what a blessing.

Funerals, as it turns out, are good days.

People laugh deeply and cry more deeply.

The best is honored and the bad forgiven.

The funeral I attended was for a man I knew only for the last five years of his life.

Listening to the eulogies, I learned he had been president of his fraternity.

He lost his shoes at a concert and spent the night walking around in his socks.

Faced with a job opportunity out of town, he told the brass to fly him home so he could coach his son’s basketball game.

He was a business genius.

He played every sport known to man, fought to win, yet knew the joy was in the playing, not the outcome.

I was dumbstruck.

The fellow I knew wasn’t up for sports or pranks.

 His kids were long out of the house and career behind him.

But there it was. His life was as rich as a king’s.

We are all more than we appear to be on any given day.

This is important to remember, especially in the news business and even moreso in the company of older people. They’ve seen and done things that would surprise us and teach us a lesson or two, even if what they want to talk about is the Register crossword puzzle or how quickly the country is descending in a handbasket.

Finally, at funerals people who’ve lost touch with each other — or who have only heard of each other through their mutual friend — meet for the first time or the first time in years.

 It shouldn’t take a funeral to bring those people together.