11.30.08
Comedy From Beyond the Grave
Comedy can be serve as a preventive resilience. Think of the iconoclasts we women become at bachelorette parties. The satire, the irreverence, the release we’re given by making fun of the grave situation that will happen the next day: the wedding. Humor helps us through this trial and allows us to face the next step in our life journey.
Not everyone gets to have a wedding, but we all get to have–a funeral. The bottom line. The last straw. Where we re-evaluate not only the life of the deceased, but our own as well. (OK, maybe some of you are thinking, aren’t you talking about a wedding?)
This week’s Comedy Around the World travels through life itself, as I attended the funeral of my friend Becky. I saw how humor offers us resilience and relief. I realized with gratitude how much alike comedy and grieving actually are. They are both necessary and healing. Think of the comedy-tragedy two-for-one on those masks and trinkets you can get in Venice. (Italy, that is. Venice, California may have another type of tragedy, I don’t know, I’ve never been there.)
Becky was one of those witty people whose sometimes politically-incorrect remarks came at just the right time. At her funeral, her son-in-law told us funny stories, like how ‘angry’ Becky was that when he married her daughter, he made Becky a mother-in-law at age 41. That joke ran through their lifestories together, and became a call-back of sorts.
Don’t you just love those people who do that at funerals! They give us a release, a chance to laugh, to breathe, to forget about how sad we are, and remind us that we are still capable of laughter! Even in this most tragic of moments.
(I wish I were that tough today, but I wasn’t. I used up all 16 Kleenex I’d brought, and both my winter gloves. John Wayne I’m not. But at least I didn’t use my pants-leg. I was wearing a skirt.)
Humor healed me during this funeral, as I watched my friend’s grandson pick his nose and stare at all the people sitting behind him. He wasn’t being very polite! He wasn’t using good behavior!
But he was funny. And I needed and appreciated him for that.
Later, I told my friend, “I’m glad I didn’t have you guys for my babysitters: ’Come on, we’re going to a funeral!’ Where are you taking him next, to the dentist?” To which she replied, “No, we’re going to take him home and beat him!”
Now that was completely politically incorrect! Hurtful! Uncalled for! And you know what? We laughed about it. It was exactly what we needed to shake us out of our grief, our suffering, our despair. A nice, safe joke wouldn’t do at this time.
I told other people about our new ‘joke’, and they laughed. This led to us talking about other funny and good memories of Becky as we ate scalloped potatoes at the dinner following. This time without tears.
(One comic says that no matter who you are, everyone’s life ends with someone eating potato salad. In my denomination, it’s scalloped potatoes. We are reformed.)
We had traveled through our grief by way of our humor. Thank you, Becky, for helping us all to, “Get Your SHINE Together!” in this life and into the next!
