Way back in the olden days (summer of Aught 07 specifically) I put out a request for blog topics. I’m revisiting the comments I got from that request now.
Today’s request comes to us all the way from sunny Mentor, OH. Jenny asks “is it ok to joke at a funeral? (an essay on when it’s ok to bring out the funny)”
This is unfortunately a timely topic. Monday I attended the funeral for my best friend Scott’s father. With respect to that event, there was levity before the service itself and following it at the memorial meal. Personally I think humor is one of the more powerful coping mechanisms we have available to us. A properly timed and worded joke can short-circuit grief before it can get to that soul-crushing stage.
Looking back to when my dad passed (btw, Happy early Father’s Day, Dad!) I remember how on edge and exhausted and emotionally spent I felt the day of his (unbeknownst to us at the time) final surgery. When the moment came that the end had come, I was overcome with an explosion of negative emotions that had been building that day. Terror, rage, etc. I remember running out of the ward and just starting to punch the wall out of disbelief. Friends and family tried to console me, but for that minute or so, I was just shut off and running on pure emotion.
(inner editor’s voice) *cough* where are you going with this?
Anyway, the emotional wave finally crested and I was able to get myself back under control. The whole family went back out to the waiting room to wait for the next step. We started talking about dad. It’s strange, how many details of that night I can remember, but then some I can’t. Someone made a joke about something dad used to do. it might've been me. regardless, laughing at that point felt so cleansing. I helped ground me and realize that the clock on the wall continued to tick.
I think it’s something similar with respect to a funeral as well. There is a time and place to be one with your grief and let your emotions flow (ok, perhaps not to the wall-punching level, I admit) and to pay your respects. But I think at a certain point in time, grief needs to be reigned in, and humor does a really good job of doing that. It tries to remind us that no matter how terrible of a sorrow we’ve been through, that none of it should discount or lessen the good things that have come before it. I think if we spend too much time grieving that we can sort of “disrespect” those who have passed.
Humor at that point in time needs to be handled by a semi-professional though. You have to wait for the right moment. You don’t want to take attention away from the ceremony. But there comes a time when things have settled enough. There’s a kind of still in the air. Some of the “fringe” relatives and loved ones may have already left, and the “core” loved ones remain. If you time it right, and do it with enough care and love behind it, it can really turn into a joyous situation. I know following my dad’s funeral, my cousins and I got pretty laugh-winded, sharing classic Dad stories. And even joking about things not even related to Dad. Same thing occurred at Scott’s father’s memorial dinner. Like I said above, ….
Wow, great spot to get pulled away by work…Umm…yeah…anyway, no matter how bad we feel at the time of the funeral or memorial or the passing, I see humor as life’s way of reminding us that time keeps on moving along, and we’d best make the best of it while we can.
7 comments:
good post Chris. I hope Scott and his family can find some therapeutic humor in this time of grief.
I was going to ramble out a story that is related to this topic when I had the thought I had previously told this story. Sure enough, I have click here to read it.
As I get older and realize that I am repeating stories, I realize that the Google could make a fortune if they could offer a search engine for the human brain. I know that my ol' man used to begin many a story with, "I probably told you this already but..."
He did, but I enjoyed listening regardless.
Happy Father's Day Pop.
~Charlie
I don't believe I've ever read that post of yours before. It really is amazing how much power humor and laughter can have.
Speaking of googling your brain, I had a high fever once and was trying to run grep on my brain. I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting any results and started to use awk and sed... I was really damn sick...
Seriously, I remember the night my grandfather died. He passed away after my grandmother around a year or so later and I'll never forget the funeral for both. My dad traveled a LOT when I was a kid and my grandfather and I were REALLY close. It was a very hard time in my life and happened to coencide with my divorce/custody battle.
In the midst of all of that, my cousin or Aunt (I can't remember who) started to talk about funeral arangements and said that she would get "When I was in England" on his flower arangement. We all just started to laugh at that point and then began to tell funny stories about my grandfather and his WWII stories when he was in England. It almost made his passing bearable. I still miss him to this day, but I saw how sad he was and how much he missed my grandmother and I'm happy that's behind him now.
Okay, WAY to long... sorry...
ok, time for my funeral story (another father's day tribute of sorta...)
my step dad passed away suddenly, a day after xmas. he was in fine health (we thought.) so funeral arrangements were....almost surreal.
my step dad was not an animal lover. he built bird houses all over the back yard, but if anything other then a bird tried to get into the bird house, he shot them! horrible, i know.....
on a day before the funeral we went out to take down the 1,000's of xmas lights he had manically hung in the yard just weeks before. (think of one on those sitcom dads who competes with neighbors for most lights.) there were so many that the neighbors came out to help and we all laugh & cried and ended up cutting the lights down. no one could figure out his elaborate system of hanging them!
we went to throw the lights away in the large dumpster behind the garage. there we found a large number of squirrels, pigeons, etc... all the animals he didn't want in his bird feeders.
i cracked a joke about how this looked a little serial-killerish. and again, laughed.
at the funeral service, the priest called in my mom, jennette, and step sis. he wanted ideas for what to say about my step-dad for the eulogy. he'd never met my step dad and was looking for stuff to say.
i said, "he had a really wicked sense of humor!" and he did, but the priest scoffed. none of us knew what to say...so finally, i said....
"he loved animals. especially squirrels."
my mom kicked me under the table and started laughing really hard, for the first time in days. we all laughed and the priest looked at us like we might be a little insane.
but it felt good to laugh. someone with a wicked sense of humor would surely have laughed!
We're taking down the bird-feeders in our back yard because they turned into fast-food resteraunts for our kitty. I was getting frequent dead offerings outside my garage or by my car of various birds of all shapes and sized.
We decided it was wrong to entice the birds into our yard only to have them murdured by our kitten.
A small and very secret part of me wants to hang more bird houses so I can keep my kitten busy killing birds and NOT in sleeping the hood of my car.
cats kill birds, glittergirls hate string, it's the circle of life, it cannot be broken
YUK!
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