My Date in the Hearse

It's time for me to accept that my life is not like other people's.

On Monday I did a funeral. The internment was at the cemetery in the little town of Edinburgh, North Dakota, about an hour and a half drive from Grand Forks. The arrangements were that I would ride up to the cemetery with the funeral director and then ride back to town with the family of the woman who had died. So, after the funeral lunch (hot dish, jello, pickles), the family packed into their cars and I got into the front of the hearse with "Bob", one of the local funeral directors. I had packed some work to do -- an hour and a half is a long time, after all. And since the job of a funeral director is to stand quietly and calmly in the background and I'd never ridden in a car with Bob, I wasn't sure how good of a conversationalist he might be. I was about to be pleasantly surprised.

There are some things I had never noticed before about funeral director Bob. First, he's good looking. Second, he's easy to talk to. Third, he's single. It turned out I hadn't needed to pack any work because there was never a quiet moment. Driving along with the deceased in the back, we talked about where we grew up and how we came to live in Grand Forks; we shared how many siblings we have and what they do and the nature of our relationships with each; we talked about places we've traveled (he takes yearly trips to Hawaii); we bonded over both having jobs that make the initial small talk on first dates rather awkward. Before I knew it, an hour and a half had passed and we were pulling into the cemetery. As Bob was getting out the committal sand for me, I was trying to figure out what to do next. What's appropriate behavior at the end of an enjoyable ride in a hearse? "This was fun; we'll have to do it again some time?" "Give me a call the next time you have an out of town committal?" I settled for "thanks for the ride, I enjoyed talking to you." Then I got out of the car to go hug the 88 year old widower and then stand by the grave of his beloved and in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life commit her body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, while Bob stood silently in the background.