Remembering How to Laugh

It's amazing how you can find humor in the midst of your darkest times.  It's almost easier to laugh during tragedy, because the opportunities to find hilarity are everywhere.  When life is mundane, there isn't anything drastic or dramatic joke about.  When you are in the pits, the depths of your despair, when you've cried until your face is completely swollen, red, disgusting, puffy, blotchy and ugly...then you have something to laugh at.

You can start by looking in the mirror and laughing because in three months you've added 89 more wrinkles than you have acquired in your whole 32 years of life (that's me).  How did that happen?  What else can I do except laugh?  And moisturize like crazy.  

The rest of the humor follows.  A lot of it is inappropriate.  But maybe, we need to be inappropriate in our grief.  It lightens the mood a little.  Losing our beloved Matt has given us a kind of "get out of jail free" card.  There are some things that I have said just because I can over the last few months, and they have brought laughter.  What is anyone going to say to me, really?

"You shouldn't say that, Julia.  It's not polite."

Nope.  No one is going to say that to me right now.  I have at least 6 more months of making totally ridiculous comments that no one will say anything about.

Here is some of my ridiculousness, mixed in with a few other pearls of wisdom:

#1  A few days after Matthew died, I was starting to feel tied to my phone.  I felt the need to check it constantly, to respond to everyone who reached out to me.  It was making me crazy.  My sister's boyfriend took it from me and put in in the bread drawer.  He told me I wasn't allowed to have it for 90 minutes.  I really needed that.  I had to run an errand, though.  My sister was very worried that I was leaving the house without a cell phone.  She wanted me to be very careful.

I said, "I'll be fine.  Two key family members do not die in the same week.  Unless you're like, in a war or something."

Inappropriate but they laughed.  

#2  Following my brother's memorial service, we piled into the car and sat in shocked silence.  Were we really driving to a cemetery to bury my brother?  That couldn't be.

I broke the ice by saying, (in response to the pastor speaking of our relationship with Christ and our beliefs) "I thought you only used the word provocative in a sexual context.  Pastor Bill said we believed in some provocative stuff.  That weirded me out."

They then explained to me that provocative can be used to express extreme emotion.  

#3  At my parent's house following my brother's memorial service and burial, surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances my friend Kathleen and I were discussing the Pastor's message from the memorial service.

Kathleen said, (in response to Pastor's Bill's use of the service as an evangelizing opportunity) "Everyone thought the Corning family would do it all sappy and mushy.  But your pastor said it like it is.  It was bad ass.  He gave a bad ass message."

My parents later told Pastor Bill that one of our best friends called his memorial service "bad ass".  I think he was flattered.  

4.  My friend Kathleen calls often to check on me.  She had to call me several times before I was able to bring myself to pick up the phone and talk.  The first time she got me to answer, I was thankful for her persistence.

Kathleen said, (actually yelled) "I mean, I'm going through my day and I think about what happened and it is so F*&!ED up.  And then I realize, if I feel this way, how the F*&! does Julia feel?  I mean, it is so F*&!ed up!"

That was one of the most validating things that has been said to me since losing Matt.  It was raw, real, the truth, and Kathleen was unafraid of being brutally honest with me  She felt my pain, but wasn't afraid to tell me about hers.  

5.  People also have said things that are just plain awful.  One woman told my mom that she would get over it.  Another told her that Matt had a choice.  Neither of those statements are true, nor will they ever be true.  We will not "get over" Matt.  It might hurt less someday, but we will always love him.  Matt did not have a choice.  He was sick.  He did NOT want to leave us, or this earth.

Those comments make us laugh, not because they are funny, but because people can be so completely devoid of sensitivity that their comments seem unreal.

I wish that I could recall every hilarious, inappropriate, ridiculous statement that has been said that has made tears turn into hysteria and given us a reprieve, if only for a brief moment.  I also know that there will be more to come.  I am thankful for laughter.  It brings me back to my old self, and reminds me how to smile.

I will leave with one more comment, made by my husband the other night.  I was grieving for Matt, and our first failed IUI attempt.  It is not the funniest thing that has been said to me, but it certainly was the sweetest.  And it did make me laugh, and remind me how to smile...even if it was only for a moment.

"I wish I had an adult-sized, baby...what do you call them?  Baby-bjorn-type-thingies...then I could carry you around with me all night."

My husband can't carry me around with him all night, but God has been carrying me around with him for these past four months.  While carrying me, He has purposely walked me past people who He knew would show me a little grace, through their humor.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” Psalm 126:2