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“I have so much I want to ask you About your life, about my father, and his father, and your son”

“I can give you some answers,” Dick said “The rest you may not want to know”

“I’ht promised

“This reunion is really touching,” I said, backing toward the office door “But if I see one of you cry, I o elsewhere”

How did I end up going to so many funerals in one year?

There was no one else to plan Mr Wainwright’s service, which I found very sad His nephew, E that he wouldn’t be able to make it to town for weeks Emery advised us to proceed without hiuy

The nighttime service was held three days later, after the police finally released the body Mr Wainwright had a hand in the planning, which definitely helped rief He was in attendance at the h very few others were It was just me, Dick, Andrea, Gabriel, Jettie, Jolene, and Zeb Daddy calected to tell him that we couldn’t speak ill of the dead, not out of respect but because the dead was standing right there

Mr Wainwright didn’t belong to a church, so there was no one to give a eulogy In fact, he’d left specific instructions that he did not want to be buried He wanted his ashes spread into the Ohio River, where they would “float downstrea around the world”

There was no visitation, no pi like vultures

In other words, it was the best funeral I’d ever been to

The riverfront in Half-Moon Holloas a series of half-finished ceing to build a channel for a riverboat in the 1970s, hedging against the chances that riverboat gaalized in Kentucky When the state referendued populace voted the com a gap in the Holloatery s

The one project that was completed and used was the public restrooms I tried not to think about that

The water, sainst the cement e a soft, kind light to the proceedings Mr Wainwright asked that we avoid the traditional black in favor of cheerful colors, forgetting, of course, that Gabriel didn’t own anything in cheerful colors Dick’s plain white T-shirt, sans sarcass

The earthly reht were stored in a hollowed-out copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls that Dick had purchased froht it was hilariously funny I held the book ina little from the wind and the nerves

“We’re gathered here today to say good-bye to the ood friend I didn’t know him until late in his life But he became very special to me in that tie He asked the questions that other people are afraid of and never doubted that the ansere out there, waiting to be discovered I’ht You were kind towhen I was adrift Thank you”