Stranger attends wake after text mix-up
Woman visits celebration for ‘Aunt Debbie’ after getting invite by mistake
On a Friday afternoon, Brock University student Leena Ali walked into a wake for a woman she had never met. How did she end up there? It all started when Ali received an accidental text from Dawn Burke, a Niagara Falls resident who thought she was texting her nephew Quentin, inviting him to “celebration” of her aunt’s life.
Burke initially had no idea she’d got the wrong number.
But you can’t blame her; when she asked “Hey . . . is this Quentin?” in her text on Sept. 17, Ali replied “Yea, who’s this?”
Ali kept up the act until Burke sent the address for the wake.
Then she confessed, letting Burke know that she wasn’t her nephew. But she also made a request, even though the celebration was for a stranger: she wanted to attend the wake for the late Debbie Celar.
She promised to bring something.
“Culturally, that’s what we do,” said Ali, who is of Sudanese descent. “If someone invites you somewhere . . . you should bring something.”
Ali tweeted the text-message exchange between her and Burke and it has since gone viral.
On Sept. 21, Ali grabbed her childhood friend Yasmin and they drove 30 minutes to Debbie Celar’s wake in Niagara.
When she walked in, she was greeted by a sea of confused faces. Dawn herself was confused when Ali approached.
“Then I showed her the fruit bowl,” said Ali. “And she freaked out and got all excited.”
Ali said she had walked into a hall with roughly 400 people celebrating Celar’s life. Dawn’s nephew Quentin, who she originally thought she was texting, was also there.
Celar was part of a big family; she left behind 13 grandchildren and 50 immediate family members. She was well-known in the neighbourhood and around Niagara Falls, said Burke. She would have invited anybody into her home.
“When I found out that it wasn’t Quentin (I texted), I just thought ‘I’ve gotta go with this, because my aunt Debbie would.’ Aunt Deb would invite these people, whoever they are, into her home. That’s just who she was,” said Burke.
Ali said she was moved to go partly because she had never heard of people celebrating a life after death. She spent the afternoon learning about the late Debbie, talking to family members and even to Debbie’s husband. They all told Ali how much she reminded them of their aunt; some even cried tears of happiness, she said.
For Burke, Ali’s visit was an entirely positive thing: “My family hasn’t stopped talking about it,” she said. “Things happen for a reason and at such a sad time in our life (Ali’s visit) made it the brightest.”