Posted by TimTheFoolMan in Family, Humor, Love, Parenting/Children.
The deaths of my parents have given my family several opportunities to demonstrate our complete lack of awareness of how to behave in public. That sentence may require a bit of explanation.
Over the years, my parents (especially mom Mom) demonstrated to us that death was a part of life, and helped us to become comfortable with this by bringing us to the funeral home when friends and family died. However, funeral homes also became the source of a good deal of “dark humor” in our family.
This may seem odd, but it was part of a pattern that we had already established, starting just moments after Mom’s death.
I could see the look of shock on the nurse’s face, so I assured her that my father wasn’t horribly cruel or experiencing some odd out-of-body experience. Humor is just the way we’ve always dealt with difficult situations. It’s a release valve.
As my sister and I were cruising through row after row of caskets, she started laughing.
“No… I can’t say it. It’s horrible. It’s cruel.” she resisted.
For some reason, the funeral director didn’t think it was that funny. I thought it was a riot.
The final moment of comedy came during the funeral, as we were sitting together as a family, up at the front. My older sister had picked out a CD of piano music, “Hymns of the Resurrection,” played by a good friend of hers. She was fond of pointing out that this guy had recorded several albums, and was an accomplished pianist of many styles.
As we sat there, listening to his music, my younger sister and I were trying to decide exactly what hymn we were listening to. The music was beautiful and familiar, but it didn’t quite seem… spiritual. In fact, it was very upbeat.
We were barely able to contain our laughter. In fact, I was so amused that I sat, face down, literally shaking with semi-contained amusement. A friend of mine later told me that people saw my body shaking, and mistakenly thought I was horribly upset.
He was right, of course. We were all about to explode with laughter.
All of us agreed that at that moment, with the crescendo of showtunes, Mom was laughing already.
You have a great perspective. I loved your fun funeral story! It made me feel better about some of our behavior when my mom passed. Just because you can laugh doesn’t mean you don’t hurt. It felt funny (strange funny) to laugh out loud at Mom’s funeral, but I did. I felt better too.
great and truely REAL…I’ve seen these wonderful moments many times!thanks for an entertaining story!
What a wonderful story. My mother passed away yesterday, and my sister and I have had several “gut busters” since. That is the way Mom would have wanted it. I think the folks at the “fun”eral home thought we were nuts.
That is all so funny. My family is exactly the same way! At grandma’s funeral we all got the giggles so hard it was difficult to make it through the funeral…and we all had to sing! Mom’s death, while very sad and hard for me to deal with her loss, was also handled with humor…you can read that story on my blog! It’s called “saying goodbye with laughter”. I totally appreciate what you say here!
Would you mimd if I use your stories in a book?
Very interesting story, I like the perspective. We are working on a project that will put more of this kind of feeling into the overall funeral process, I think it’s long overdue….losing someone doesn’t have to be dark and depressing.
You know Tim, the day we are born we start dying so I just don’t get the big deal of being so surprised when someone dies. The timing may not be our choice but we are all gonna’ go!!! Just the other day I was telling Kate exactly the way I want it done and she laughed and laughed–exactly the way I want it that day.
I always enjoyed your Dad and Mom. I would have loved swapping funeral tales with them.
I have encountered death with many friends and relatives so I enjoyed seeing this side of it. Especially as a Christian I know I am going to see a lot of these people again…whether they want to see me or not!! I have told my husband I don’t want a casket but a room full of wonderful and funny pictures, lots of singing and plenty of fried chicken, brownies and diet caffeine free Dr. Pepper…everyone is invited to my graduation celebration!!