Laughter in the Face of Death

When my great-grandfather died and we went to his funeral, my dad leaned over to me and whispered a quote from Muppet Treasure Island – his favorite movie – into my ear: “We’re in a room with a dead guy!” I could barely hold my laughter in, and later, in the car, my dad made me promise him that I’d make the same joke at his funeral. “Make my funeral a celebration, because I don’t want people to be sad,” he told me. “I want people to laugh.”

The readings that we did for today revealed the wisdom in my dad’s approach toward death. Humor is an important tool in acknowledging and experiencing the truth in a way that lessens any potential associated pain; when it comes to grief or other such strong, negative emotions, humor is vital for coping, but often overlooked. In the situation above, my father used humor to lighten one of my first experiences with death – his addition later was a way to talk about the inevitability of a much dearer loss without risking further upset. It was a form of relief humor, an attempt to relieve any pain I felt at the moment or might feel in the future when he was gone.

Humor is not just important in broaching the topic of death, however. As the more personal reading revealed, it can assist in depression or less extreme negative emotions. When the world seems hopeless and dull, making yourself laugh can combat the negativity and work to heal. I did a bit of extra research, and laughter has been proven to act positively against depression in numerous circumstances and works neurologically in a way that counteracts certain symptoms, proving our readings’ assumptions of the healthy and productive linkage.

Laughter in negative situations, whether they’re external (death) or internal (depression), is a good and relatively easy to retake control over the uncontrollable and lighten one’s ability to deal with said situations. Humor is not just a necessary coping mechanism, but an effective healing mechanism as well.