We had been going to funerals of strangers for about a year when Kyle Mather’s tragic story hit the newspapers. The timing couldn’t have been better.

Kyle was to be our first semi-celebrity. While I cooked breakfast, a fat feta cheese and spinach omelet with fried potatoes and onions on the side, Sylvia sat at the kitchen table and read me the highlights from the newspaper. "It says he mistook the washer fluid for leftover booze from a camping trip."

I had my head in the fridge, the sour cream eluding me. "I don’t get it."

"It says they went camping in Vermont a week before the dance, during spring break. They bought liquor over there and poured it into empty wiper-fluid bottles to sneak back across the border."

"Kids," I said with the sour cream container under my arm, and closed the refrigerator door. I gently flipped the omelet, using two spatulas to make sure it didn’t break apart. A little bit of half-raw egg splashed on the front my robe. I wiped it with a paper towel. "But why did he drink the wiper fluid? I mean, it’s blue."

"It says he was already so drunk by the time he got to the dance that he probably didn’t notice, or didn’t bother to check."

"When’s the funeral?"

"Saturday."

I turned off the heat beneath the potatoes and onions and tipped them from the pan into a large shallow bowl, decorated with drawings of various herbs. A wedding gift from Sylvia’s Aunt Phoebe (may she rest in peace). "Is there a viewing?" I asked, licking a finger.

"I certainly hope so," Sylvia said. "Let me check."

I felt for the lid of the sour cream with my fingers, my eyes on Sylvia. She was bent over the table, flipping quickly through another section of the paper, looking for the obits. "It might not be in there yet," I offered. She didn’t look up. She ran one finger down the open page, her eyes squinted in concentration. Her white robe was open in front, probably a bit more than she thought it was. I could see a good portion of the curve of her right breast. The robe cut diagonally across the light pink outer halo of her nipple. I felt a warm pang inside my own robe. I put the sour cream down on the counter, turned the other stove burner off, and walked toward her.

Before Sylvia could look up, I reached beneath her robe and quietly wrapped my hand around the soft arc of her breast. I squeezed gently. "Thursday and Friday night," she whispered in exhale. I shifted my fingers and her nipple became erect between two of them. "He’s exposed Thursday and Friday night," she breathed into my ear, her lips gently biting my lobe with each syllable. I turned her chair around to face me and lifted her from it. She wrapped her legs tightly around my waist, her arms around my neck. "The eggs," she panted, her lips covering mine. Her morning breath was strong; fragrant in some ways and rank in others, with just a slight suggestion of decay. It drove me crazy.

"They’re better cold," I said.

We never planned to take up attending other people’s funerals as a hobby, but once it started I think we both knew almost immediately what a boon to our relationship it was. It wasn’t that things were going bad between the two of us, things were just going – going along in safe but unspectacular fashion, a lackluster walk down an uninspiring path that was leading to our own funerals somewhere down the line. There just didn’t seem to be anything remarkable to do along the way.

We’d been married five years when we started, and up until then neither of us had shown any predilection for death. We are not necrophiles. I enjoy having sex with my very-alive wife, and I like to think she enjoys having it with me. And it’s not the corpses that attracted us – not exclusively. We liked everything about funerals: the mourning, the sobbing, the eulogies, the buffets.

We stumbled upon our first funeral quite by accident. We were on our way to a wedding – Sylvia’s boss’s third marriage – and we were late and lost in some small town north of Mont-real. I was driving and Sylvia was yelling at me to stop somewhere and ask for directions. I refused for as long as I could, and just when I had promised to stop at the next gas station, a church came into view. It was a stout white building with big red doors and a rather tall steeple. A white sandstone statue of Jesus stood on a marble pedestal out front, hands outstretched toward the street. Its parking lot, off to one side of the church, was full, and more parked cars lined the road.

"Quick, park," Sylvia demanded. She dreaded having to go to her boss’s wedding almost as much as I did, but attendance, in an unwritten kind of way, was mandatory.

"Where?" I asked.

"Right there!" She pointed to a Kentucky Fried Chicken a little further down the road.

"They could tow us," I said.

"Do it quick and they won’t notice."

I parked and we dashed hunched over through the parking lot, knuckles practically dragging on the pavement, imagining we were invisible. We laughed all the way to the road, then really picked up the pace. My dress shoes were tight and hurting me, but Sylvia was pulling me by the arm, just a little ahead of me. In her other hand she held her little black formal handbag, and she pressed that against her chest to keep from popping out of her top. She was wearing a light grey blazer, unbuttoned, with a darker grey, low-cut camisole underneath. Her skirt was simple and matched her hair: black, short and smart. She really looked stunning, even clodhopping in her heels, and I quite enjoyed the view from behind. I shook my arm free from her hand and gave her left buttock a quick squeeze. She swatted me backhandedly without stopping or turning around, and I heard her laugh. We bounded past the Jesus statue, stopped for a second to catch our breath in front of the red doors, and went inside arm in arm.

There was quiet, melancholic organ music playing, and I remember thinking it was pretty gloomy for a marriage. But I’d never been to anybody’s third wedding and thought maybe it was normal. There were no ushers to greet us, but we were late. From what I’d seen of the church outside, the chapel was bigger than I expected. It was narrow, but long. There were at least forty pews of a dark, lacquered wood leading to the altar and all of them, save for the last three or four, were full. There was no bride in sight, which was a good sign; we weren’t so late after all. A priest with a beard that made me think of Abe Lincoln was standing at the end of the centre aisle in front of the altar, and I scanned the area for the groom and his men.

I saw the coffin but Sylvia had me by the arm, and she pulled me into the third-to-last pew. She sat us near the middle, an older couple seated to her left. I was about to tell her we were in the wrong church, but she knelt in front of our seat before I had a chance to open my mouth. Sylvia is in no way a practising Catholic, but the traditions of her childhood seem to take over when she finds herself inside a church. I waited patiently for her to finish praying, and exchanged a few stoical glances with the old man and woman beside us. Sylvia sat back up again, and she took hold of my hand in an automatic kind of way. I leaned over and whispered, "This isn’t the right place. There’s a casket up front." She craned her neck to look at the altar, and an expression of horror came over her face. I pulled gently at her hand and said as quietly as I could, "Let’s get out of here."

I turned to my right and started to stand up, but more latecomers – six of them – shuffled into our pew. In the lead was an extremely fat woman wearing a baby-blue dress that wrap-ped around her flabby body like a shawl. Even walking sideways, her stomach pressed hard against the back of the next pew and her rump scarcely squeezed by the bench behind. A man that I assumed was her husband, also plump but much taller, followed her, and behind him came four young and rotund girls. All six of them knelt in unison, and the woman sniveled hoarsely. Without looking up from his own prayer, the man put his arm around his wife’s enormous shoulders, but his hand only made it to the centre of her neck. The organ music grew louder and more ominous. The fat family sat back in the pew, twelve hefty legs blocking our escape.

I motioned to Sylvia to go out the other way, past the elderly couple, and then the priest cleared his throat and began to speak. "Family and friends of Timothy Ellis, welcome." Sylvia wasn’t moving, just staring ahead, her eyes on the priest. I nudged her gently toward our only viable exit route, but she resisted. The old man next to her was staring at me, I could feel his eyes but I avoided looking directly at him. I gave Sylvia another easygoing push.

She turned to me and whispered, rather loudly, "It’s too late. Forget it."