Jeanne, Believe me, I understand how experience can take all the laugh out of a joke. For most of us, making jokes about the potential horrors of life is sort of like whistling through the graveyard. We keep the horror at bay by making it into a joke. We share a joke and a laugh and it lets us say, without words, "yeah, that's never gonna happen to me because that fellow in the joke was such a bozo." My dad died of cancer in 1976. We buried him on Labor Day. It was hot and muggy in Central Texas and I can't event tell you how horrible the day was. Or the preceding three months. Nightmare might be the only word that would do justice. The funeral home had buried every family member to die in the past 30 years or so. (Small town) I would like to tell you more, but I can't because I'm going to use his real name. The man at the funeral home was named Groner Pitts. I had been with Mom through all the preparations and such, so had been talking to him for a week or so. But that day at the cemetery, it was about 105 with 95% humidity and one chair too few. I had to share a folding chair with my best friend in the world, Missy Miller. About halfway through the service, Missy leaned into my ear and whispered "Groner Pitts." Yeah, ..... I know this is horrible. I started to giggle. I tried to hold my breath, it didn't work. When I started shaking, people thought I was crying (I'd already cried my heart dry by that time) and began to pat me on the arm, back, etc. And seeing their mistake, Missy began to giggle. And then we couldn't contain it any more. Two 19-year-old girls, trying hard to make it look like we were crying, laughing so hard we couldn't breathe. And we fell out of the chair. Or maybe it just folded from under us. I don't know. All I remember is hitting the ground and then somebody thought I"d fainted. It was hot. Well, Missy and I ended up in the backseat of a funeral home limo with the A/C blasting snow, laughing until we almost died. We held each other and howled with laughter. "Groner Pitts" we'd take turns saying. "Groner Pitts buries people."
Maybe you'd have to have been there. There was nothing funny about burying my 58-year-old father. Nothing funny about knowing that we had to drive 120 miles back to Waco to be at Baylor for classes by 8 a.m. the next morning. Nothing funny about what the future would hold for my family. But we laughed at that time for all we were worth. I think maybe it saved our lives.
All of you who hated that joke about the man shooting his wife are right, it's not funny. But somebody somewhere needs a sick laugh as bad as I did on that horrible day in 1976, and if the ridiculous image of somebody being so dense as to take the instructions "make sure she's really dead" literally is what it takes to give that person some relief, then so be it. And I'll even laugh a little bit too, just so they don't have to laugh alone.
Hugs and prayers for you, Jeanne. I hope someday laughs and giggles and humor come back to your life. I wish I could give you that gift.
Sunny