since i have a big cyber mouth . ill reply to kerms reply here.
The whole family getting together thing rings so true. we all seemed to lose our inner monologue. A woman that was a friend of my fathers stopped by to wish us what ever the fuck people think you want to hear. she told my mom that she would pray for my dad and my mom just looked at her and said " a little late for that now isn't it?"My family , being my family laughed the poor woman right out the door.
I think that the comedy from the ultimate tragedy comes, in my case anyway, from the little man that drives my body around when shit gets so bad i need to check out.a self defensive schizophrenia that steps in when i need to step out. My little guy is a bit of a smart ass that actually invented the tombstone rating system that helped me get through the service. I would assign grief faces points based on how many tombstones it ranked.
The service for my father was the single worst yet most hilarious time of my life and he drove the whole time. he noticed my aunts dress was tucked into her ass crack creating an odd origami effect that was like a silent horror movie done by lace encrusted ass muppets. he noticed that every time i thought phew. the sad parts over someone else would get up and punch me in the heart repeatedly. he was the one that put the vision of rocky training at an old folks home into my head. he was the one, when the preacher dude was reading a heartfelt eulogy i had written for my father, pointed out that he was reading it with all the style of Forrest Gump giving a report of how he spent ehis summer. and he was definitely the one who right when i had reached the peak of sad, and the woman played amazing grace on the viola looked up and said, for all the room to hear. "oh fer fuckssake, really?" and just started giggling at the absurdity of the whole thing. he was also fully responsible for inviting everyone back to the house for an all you can grieve buffet. so i think funny comes from the little voice behind our eyes that sits in there all day while we get the shit done life demands, and points out the silly shit we might have missed. some people probably don't have the guy behind the eyes and they become either sane, or republican. you can't be both.
Wow. What a reply.
ReplyDeleteMy Mom's service was really weird. There was a moment when it was supposed to be very solemn. They put on a CD of Moonlight Sonata, a piece my Mother practised a whole lot.
The CD started to skip. I held back this laugh. I still had tears streaming out both eyes and was trying really hard not to laugh. I looked at the sky outside and thought about how it was a good thing she was dead because she'd have hated the CD. Not because it skipped it was just a bad performance as well and she'd have fucking hated that.
When she was admitted to hospital, I go meet my sister, who is in a special "family room" I'd never seen before. She's kind of young and they really scared her. They gave her the "she's not likely to live" talk and then stuffed her in this tiny room away from everyone else so she could cry and scream and not disturb anyone.
It was shattering to see her all small and curled up in a corner, looking completely destroyed. She'd kind of lost all hope. She said she reached for something to read in the waiting room and ALL the literature there was about handling your grief and "processing bereavement" like that shit is cheese. So that's very subtle and she was all alone with these horrible things in her head.
I immediately got her talking. Well as soon as I could, I got her laughing too, knowing that our sadness actually makes no difference to Mom but it makes a difference to us. So a hug and a talk later and we were both laughing quite hard when a nurse came to tell us we could see our Mom. I don't think they expected to see us laughing in the grief room because they definitely seemed surprised and not quite sure how to approach us Were we really here to see our Mom? They had a Laughter-in-the-sad-room-doesn't-compute-face.
I don't know how common it is to laugh during these moments. But there was no way I was going to watch my own sister collapse into panic and worry. We didn't even know how serious it was. We just knew THEY thought she'd die.
well I first heard a doctor say my mother would die and I should make her final arrangements ten years ago. So to me it's not actually over until my Mom blows the final whistle. No doctor can decide that because as Mom would say, she wouldn't let them kill her when it was convenient for them.
So yeah, I'm at the memorial service my stepfather organized and he's turning my Mom's life into a long winded anecdote about himself and this speech lasts, I kid you not, a half hour and I think my Mom got a mention or two at the beginning. So I walked out and sat with my best friend of 25 years now. We sat and smoked a cigarette and laughed.
It's all you can really do sometimes. I don't mean "laugh or cry" stuff. Crying is great - nothing against it. What I mean is that the only thing that feels sane is to escape. I think we just cannot cope with facing some things unless we have that escape right beside us. I don't mean its a cop out, I mean some insane humor is possibly necessary to function and maintain sanity overall. Without it we disconnect from other people.
As proof I offer Republicans, who cannot laugh very much. As a result, they've lost a lot of compassion for their fellow man, they lose a lot of insight into themselves. Laughter, I think, takes us places we have no other way of getting and helps us face things we have no other way of facing.
It's also why, I think, all the best political shows are comedy ones - only they can tell the truth. The news is always completely serious and therefore it's disconnectred and it can continue to tell one big human lie which doesn't correspond to anything real.
its nice to know that there are other people out there that get it. i was actually thinking about writing that "reply" for a while but it seemed odd to me that I would find so much humor in such a terrible thing. i think we might be on to something here. laughter, whether given or received is the safety valve on the pressure cooker of our sanity.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think I get it.
ReplyDeleteIt is odd to find humor in the worst times of life and it's prone to completely misunderstanding.
It's not heartlessness that makes me laugh at the bleak times, it's actually an act of compassion and understanding. For me it was also the sense that I'm somehow still having a dialog with my Mom, we're laughing about the music or the speech or this or that other thing. She'd be laughing to be five minutes late for her own funeral.
My whole family laughed at that comment. She hated being late. It would drive her up the wall being a minute late. Being late for her own funeral service was, we all saw it, a kind of karmic and poetic moment of irony and we all cracked up at the thought of Mom getting mad, even in the afterlife none of us really believe in.
So I don't think it's inappropriate at all. I'm very glad you wrote that. It makes good sense to me and it tells me weird though I am, I am definitely not alone.
So thanks. It took guts.
Wonderful. Simply wonderful, Typo.
ReplyDeleteAs an oncology RN, I learned to celebrate and be grateful for all the things I have, and all those I don't.
My weird sense of humor is based on life's littlest of truths, and it doesn't matter if anyone else gets it. It is life's little absurdities that often keep me keepin' on. It's wonderful to see others acknowledge this, too.
Thank you for your open and honest post, knig. You rock.