I’ve never been much for wakes. Something about sitting amidst crying octogenarians and making small talk with a dead body at the center of it makes it seem like some sort of bizarre dinner party, except you don’t get an hors d’overs.  It might have something to do with the fact that aside from my mother’s parents, nobody real close to me has ever died. Or it might be the fact that if you sit in that room staring at the body long enough you swear it’s breathing and then you get all sort of mixed up zombie day dreams. So you either spend your time fantasizing about the waking dead, or avoid the subject at hand. I further don’t understand the necessity for the multiple viewings which log in some serious face-time with the corpse, that you wouldn’t even normally do with the living person. I have a vivid memory of a four year old Travis sitting on the steps of the funeral home during his grandmother’s wake. He just and watched every walk by and wondered if she died because he never hugged her and rubber her kisses off.

Twenty four years later and I sat on the same exact steps while watching a parade of mourners go in and out for a distant relative I didn’t even know.  I nervously tapped my feet while checking my email on the cell phone.  That is until I heard a voice telling me that it’s a little rude to be checking my phone at a wake. I muttered out some sort of apology before looking up and noticed it was her.

I told her that if she was stalking me, a wake was hardly the place. She didn’t laugh. And I immediately apologized and said, “I tend to make jokes at inappropriate times.” Which got a small smile out of her, but  I find the stalking joke funny for about one reason. So we talked about how we mutually knew the deceased, and how we were both there out of a sense of obligation, rather than remorse and mourning.

Then I did something both smart and dumb. I told her that I wanted to get her number the last time I saw her, but the timing wasn’t exactly right.

“Hows the timing now?”

“Well, we are at a wake so…I’d say we have bang up timing.”

So, yes I got a number at a wake, which makes me feel more than slightly horrible. But it was just a manner of being at the same place in the same time.