The gift of the grave

If you're going to start digging up family history, a graveyard is a fine place to begin, I have learned - and not just for the symbolism. It hadn't occurred to me until three or four years ago to look up where my uncle, Richard Lindner, a famous artist whose work is owned by major museums around the world, is buried. It turns out he rests no more than 15 miles from where I now live, on the banks of the Hudson River, north of New York City. Richard is buried at Westchester Hills in Hastings-on-Hudson, an upscale Jewish cemetery, the resting place of Gershwins, Guggenheims and other major establishment figures. Having found him and visited him, I didn't think much more about it, until the phone rang a couple of days later, the cemetery calling to tell me that as Richard's blood relative, I had inherited a grave alongside him, free, "all taxes paid".