Apparently I am attending my father’s funeral in a week, after all. I didn’t want to but my sisters and brother are mostly attending and I will get to see my older brother for the first time in ages.

Had a long talk with one younger sister and we are of similar mind about my father. He had been living down south, so it was surprising and distressing to find out he’d purchased a plot in the cemetery, here where my brother is — where I’d planned to have my own ashes interred someday. If I have to have him as an eternal neighbor, I plan to be a very bad ghost neighbor. (Planning this imaginary scene put me in a better mood and resigned me to things.) There’s just no question of leaving my brother to stay there alone.