I cried and cried and cried on the night of February 27, 2008. I’m not sure anyone ever did that watching Charlie Rose on PBS. But there I was.

William F. Buckley Jr. had died that day. And Rose played recaps of interviews he had conducted with Bill over the years. Bill founded National Review in 1955, and I was the editor of our website when he died. I announced his death online and received so many beautiful notes about the impact he had had on people’s lives. One medical doctor told me that Bill had been the father figure in his life — as his mother had encouraged him to watch Firing Line on PBS weekly. Catholic priests told me Bill helped inspire their vocations. A nun said the same. People told me that when they met him, he made them feel like the most important person in the world.

I mention this because PBS has a new documentary about WFB, The Incomparable Mr. Buckley. I’m grateful because he was a cultural force. And the documentary captures some of that.

What I love about it, as someone who was humbled and blessed to know WFB a bit in his later years, is the amount of time the documentary’s makers spend listening to his son, Christopher, talk about his time sailing with his father and about Bill’s love for Patricia, Bill’s wife and Christopher’s mother.

But something the treatment misses is Bill’s faith in God and his deep appreciation for everything that came before him that made him who he was.

If there is one word that would accurately describe WFB, it would be “grateful.” He often talked about the patrimony we were called to revere and steward. Bill didn’t think that he was the greatest person to come on the human scene. He knew he had a calling to serve and to preserve the gifts that were given to him for as long as he was on the earth.

Bill had a public platform, and he took it seriously. He was a defender of freedom in a way most of us can never be. The documentary notes his friendship with Ronald Reagan but regards Bill’s role in the ending of the Soviet Union as a mere footnote. And while Bill’s life changed American history, its most enduring and important lessons are things we can all relate to and learn from in the most practical ways.

“We cannot repay in kind the gift of the Beatitudes,” is one of my favorite things he ever said, “with their eternal, searing meaning — Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He continued: “But our ongoing failure to recognize that we owe a huge debt that can be requited only by gratitude — defined here as appreciation, however rendered, of the best that we have, and a determined effort to protect and cherish it — our failure here marks us as the masses in revolt; in revolt against our benefactors, our civilization, against God himself.”

We are part of something that is ongoing. It’s something eternal.

Part of the reason I cried during the Rose replays on the night WFB died is because, in one of the interviews, Bill had said that he was ready to die — a snippet that is included in the new documentary. We live in a culture where people are pressured to consider assisted suicide and made to feel like burdens. This was something different. Bill was heartbroken about the death of his wife, and he was tired. And he knew he had a Redeemer who would welcome him with mercy.

I think about WFB often for many reasons. He was so kind to an awkward twentysomething editorial associate at National Review, including when my father suddenly died. I wonder, too, what he would think of Pope Francis. He was never shy to comment on Catholic Church matters. He was a great lover of the traditional Latin Mass and was not pleased with Second Vatican Council changes. Yet Pope Francis has emphasized time and again how there is more Christian persecution today than there was at the beginning of Christianity. That’s something that would have lit a fire under WFB.

In the end, The Incomparable Mr. Buckley blames its subject for our current insane politics. That misses the most important parts of Bill. Virtue. Loyalty. Civility. One of his best friends was John Kenneth Galbraith, the liberal economist, with whom Bill continued to spend time to Gailbraith’s dying days. We need to be so much more than politics. The documentary seemed to get that at the beginning but then lost the focus. Here’s another point on which Pope Francis and Bill Buckley would agree: We can’t live in ideological silos. We need to celebrate the gifts we have been given — which include the people who think differently than we do. And then enjoy Bach or other beautiful things together.

Our lives can be much more than politics, and William F. Buckley Jr.’s life certainly was. The Incomparable Mr. Buckley got that to an extent, but it ultimately missed the more enduring lessons by making everything about Donald Trump.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.