The July 4 weekend is upon us. Families will gather. I am at a stage in life where, frankly, I prefer to have my holidays at home with my dog, a turkey breast for one and a box of wine. Proverbs 17:1 says, "Better is a dry morsel with quietness than a house full of feasting and strife."

Actually, it is my long-gone relatives whose company I prefer. I am enchanted by the Ancestry.com commercial in which a biplane swoops down into the front yard of a puzzled-yet-delighted man. I would love to have complete family histories on both sides, soup to nuts, so I could get to know my ancestors as more than names on tombstones.

Once a year for Decoration Day my parents would buy flats of annuals, load the kids into our hearse-like black station wagon and off we would go to "fix" the graves of long-dead family members.

We kids loved the quiet, pretty cemetery where we were encouraged to dig in the dirt and get muddy. We played hide-and-seek among the gravestones, careful not to step on the actual graves out of respect for the occupants.

Who could find the oldest date? was a favorite game. My favorite monument was the one taller than my dad with what we believed was an enormous bowling ball on top. Dad said it bore our name, even though it had an extra "m," which must have been lost in some sort of modernization years before my dad was born. No one ever really talked to us about the people buried under our petunias. The adults just seemed to do this annual duty as if that were enough remembering for them.

When my dad and his brother, Uncle Terry, sat on our porch each summer there were whispers of an unnamed aunt, stunningly beautiful, who had once won a contest for the most beautiful hands in the county. She married a wealthy older man, lived in a posh house in the fashionable East End of Pittsburgh and had her own Pierce-Arrow car that she drove into one of Kaufmann's plate glass windows. Her adoring husband took her to Lourdes for the cure but it did not take. She died shortly thereafter from the drink. We had an aged, drying photo album with pictures of people neither my dad nor uncle could seem to remember. We were a family with many secrets seemingly best forgotten.

Then, Uncle Dick came home.

It began with a phone call one hot summer night. The city police were calling all the listings with our name in our small town phone directory. An intern from a VA hospital in California was trying to reach the family of Dick Commiskey in Connellsville, Pa. The doctor solemnly informed my dad that Uncle Dick was near the end. My puzzled dad was told he would be kept informed; a few days later our phantom uncle was dead.

"Where would you like the body sent?" asked the solicitous young intern. My dad said "I'll get back to you on that" and quickly conferred with Uncle Terry and cousin Wayne Swan. The VA was given the address of the Paul G. Fink Funeral Home and Uncle Dick began his long, cross-country ride home.

Uncle Dick had last been seen in 1920, the year before my dad was born. The story was that Uncle Dick, a talented ball player, had hit a line drive into the chest of a pitcher, killing the man instantly. Fearing police pursuit, he reportedly was seen jumping from the one bridge in town into the Youghiogheny River, which is pretty shallow at that point. He vanished until that call in the summer of 1972. Every Memorial Day a wreath was dropped into the river in Connellsville to honor those lost in watery depths. I always added Uncle Dick to the list.

Where had he been all those years? The VA records told little. It was surmised he had lived in California. Obviously he was an honorably discharged veteran. Had he ever married? Did he have children? What kind of work had he done? Did he like fried liver, Irish whiskey and crisp white dress shirts like his brother, my grandfather? Was it shame and fear that kept him so out of touch? Had any of his brothers and sisters tried to find him? Or didn't they want to find him? Had they missed him all those years, all those holidays?

Uncle Dick's flag-draped, government-issue casket arrived in a Baltimore and Ohio freight car. Mr. Fink, undertaker to the Irish families in town, carted it off to the funeral home. He asked my dad to identify the body of a man who had disappeared a year before my dad was born. This was legally required by the VA. What to do?

My intrepid mother got Dad and cousin Wayne into the car and off to the funeral parlor. Gently ushered into Mr. Fink's basement, my parents and cousin peered at the spitting image of my long-dead grandfather. Yup, it was most likely Uncle Dick, wrapped in a sheet.

Good enough for government work, said Mr. Fink. He would file for the paltry death benefit from the VA. And, of course, funeral arrangements needed to be made.

Mom said Uncle Dick should have a decent Catholic burial. She convinced my dad to have a viewing. This for a man whom no one remembered. And most of the old timers who looked forward to a good wake were gone.

A death notice was put in the paper. Mom went to the best men's store in town and outfitted Uncle Dick from the skin out. The parish priest counseled that a prayer service at the funeral parlor would be sufficient. How does one eulogize a man like Uncle Dick?

Flowers were ordered. The old cemetery records had been lost or destroyed, so the caretaker ran a metal rod into the soil around the bowling ball monument to see if there was room for Uncle Dick. I was told my presence was required at the brief viewing. A command performance out of respect for an unknown uncle.

I stood next to my dad, waiting for the wake to begin. A few of Dad's friends came, mostly out of curiosity I suspect.

One elderly neighbor, Mary, a woman who filled her days going to wakes, was there. Mary confirmed that Uncle Dick could have been Granddad's twin and commented that he had survived the long train ride from California in fine shape. A full report could now be made to the sodality ladies at church. Mary carried an empty shopping bag for leftovers from the funeral lunch. She left in a bit of a huff once she realized there wasn't going to be any food.

I averted my eyes from the open casket and the face that had been my granddad's. I clutched tissue in my fists, trying to keep from looking at my watch, praying the two hours would pass quickly.

The surrealness of the situation washed over me. The flower smell made me dizzy. I had fallen down the rabbit hole and into the front parlor of the Paul G. Fink Funeral Home. Begging off the burial the next day because of work, I drove home feeling strangely guilty for not helping to put Uncle Dick to rest.

And so, the next morning, Uncle Dick was buried for eternity next to the family he had so long avoided. He rests under the bowling ball in a fine suit of clothes. His name was never etched into the ancient marble, though. Uncle Dick once again had the anonymity in which he had lived his life. Still, he is not with strangers.

As for me, I wistfully hope that someday a biplane, or perhaps a Pierce-Arrow, will swoop down on my lawn.