What has made you laugh during a tragic time?

All the time, it is how I deal with stress.

My Mom was in Palliative (dying of cancer), and was in and out of it during that time (this was during her last two weeks of life). One night, my whole family was in the hospital room with her and she was sleeping (she had been asleep all day). A relative called the room phone and my brother answered. I guess that the relative asked my brother who was all there, because he started naming off the people in the room. He finished naming off the names of my siblings, when suddenly, my Mom woke, raised her head slightly, pointed her finger upward and said “and Mom”. We got a good chuckle out of that one. A nice memory. :)

I don’t think that I’ve ever been to a funeral (or calling hours/wake, really) where there wasn’t some kind of comic relief. I think it’s natural to have a good, heartfelt laugh when you are grieving.
I can’t think of any particularly funny or specific examples, but I’ve been to a lot of funerals and it seems to happen every time.

I had gotten the “come home now, mom will likely die tonight phone call.” I arranged a plane flight out of Cleveland. As I was pulling into the airport, I noticed the initials: C leveland H opkins I nternational A irport. All I could think was, “Good grief! I’m flying out of the Chiaport!

The other one was when my mom and dad were both in the hospital. Luckily, the same hospital. Prior to the nurse arriving to take him to surgery, we were all in his room talking. (Mom, me, 3 sisters, spouses and 1 nephew.) As it was heart bypass surgery, we knew he would be in there for several hours. My dad said, “Hey, you guys should go to Schwabl’s for lunch. ” (Favorite family restaurant.) Then he proceeds to give us directions from the hospital to the restaurant. My mom pipes up, “No, it’s easier if you go straight down Main Street and take that to Seneca Street.” They fussed at each other for a couple of minutes about the best way to go until one of my sisters says, “You’re having heart surgery and mom has tests today. We’re not going anywhere for lunch but the cafeteria!”

When my Grandad died I managed to make my family laugh by telling everyone he was….. (cue breaking into song) “master of the house…keeper of the zoo” etc etc. That will only make sense to anyone who has seen Les Miserables. I was 11 years at the time and I remember everyone laughing much harder than I thought they would, it obviously brought some much needed light relief!

When my mom was told she had cancer, we were absolutely devastated. It was all over her spine.

Mom and I handle things with humor and we are very close, so we were joking about her thinking her ‘cottage cheese and pineapple diet’ was working, when it was just cancer. We also joked around that she could smoke cigarettes now since she was Stage 4 and no one would complain.

We cried, then laughed, and cried some more. She is cancer-free, still working and feeling great currently.

Wait a second… So your mom recovered completely from stage 4 cancer? Or am I completely misreading this? My brain is mush…

@RandomGirl She was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer in October 2011, with the least aggressive form of it you can get. She did radiation for the spots on her back, and a more gentle form of chemo each week (still does), and her last two full body scans have shown no cancer.

Eventually she may still die from it, they did give her ten years max, but who knows. She gives all glory to God for her recovery. Do your mammograms.

@KNOWITALL Wow, so cool!

@RandomGirl Yeah, that’s the kind of thing that doctors don’t tell you when you get the ‘verdict’ on cancer. When they first told us, it was a month to three months, then a year, now it’s ten years, it was very scary and very unnecessary to do to human beings. Peace.

@KNOWITALL I had a client years ago, they gave him six months to live. Leukemia. 12 years later he was helping his kids get started farming. He made it another year and then it got him, but he always stayed upbeat.

When I was pretty young but already driving, a close friend’s mom died. I had known her much of my life and was very sad. On the way to the burial, I was driving directly behind the limo carrying my friend and his dad. This was my first funeral, I believe, and I recall seeing my friend lean over and say something to his dad, and watching in horror as they both laughed uproariously. It was some time later, when my own dad died, that I realized that in times of grief, being able to laugh (over a happy memory, for example) can be a great comfort.

My Dad was dying from cancer but he was comfortably ensconced at home. My family lives all over the place but we knew he was close to the end so we had gathered at home to visit and see him. He was on painkillers so he slept a lot. At one point we were all gathered in his room and talking in whispers amongst ourselves. We didn’t want to disturb him. I don’t remember what we were talking about really. He wakes up later and says to my mom, “So what was that big pow wow about before?” Somehow he was aware of us being there even though we thought he was out cold. Oh my God, to this day we laugh about that. It’s bittersweet.

There’s a story about a group of literary wits in the 30’s carrying one of their friends, who had died down the stairs in his coffin. The corpse had his head facing downstairs. One of the wags said, “I hope Joe didn’t have any change on him, because it would all fall out of his pocket.”
Well, maybe you had to be there.

Sorry I go numb when it’s bad, That’s just how I am.

When I was 9 or 10 I accidentally poked a sharp stick deep into my own right eye. While my mother was busy on the phone making a doctor appointment, I sat there crying and grieving what I was pretty sure would be the permanent blindness in that eye (which it was). My big brother wanted to cheer me up so he picked up his guitar and started playing one cheery song after another but I made it clear I was not about to be cheered up. Without a word he literally changed his tune to the Funeral March! It took me by such surprise that I actually burst into laughter for a few moments there! Nobody knows a brother like a brother!