So I pop a book on tape into the truck’s cassette player. It’s Koontz’s “Fear Nothing”. It starts out with a guy waiting for his Father to die of cancer and then the Father dies and then the body is stolen.

Dad had a closed casket. I never saw the body. Was it in there?

It’s a good thing I’m not as nutsy as my brothers.

The moral of this is not to buy an unknown book on tape even if it is only $2 at a garage sale. I’m hooked, though. Koontz is a powerful writer even if he is a kook. I have to finish the stupid book. I bought the sequal – Seize the Night – at the same time. It looks like another 25 hours or so of this nut.

Funerals are strange things, full of politics and theatre. The Ladies of the DAR did a service for Dad that was right out of Stephen King. There were DAR Ladies, none younger than 80, with faces from Norman Rockwell who sadly read a proclamation. They all wore sports type running shoes, which I thought was odd.

My cousin who I hadn’t seen in forty years, showed up, but we think he was there to sell the cemetery plots that my Uncle left in his will to my father. Plots at Oak hill cemetery, especially up in the old section where my family rest, go for thousands of dollars.

When one of my friend’s father died, I went to help plant him. It was the middle of the winter and bitter cold. My friend lives within walking distance of the cemetery, but never showed up to help me bury Dad. I’m a little upset by this.

Oak Hill cemetry is a cool place. Dad’s plot is about 20 feet from the artist Edward Hopper. Ben Hecht is down the path a little near where his collaborator Charles McCarther is buried. Helen Hayes is right there, too. Carson McCullers is only a few feet away. Grahams, Polhemuses, Galbraiths and Demerests fill the plots around him. All his ancestors, aunts and uncles and cousins going back 250 years are there. Dad is in good company. I might be there someday.