Humor within Grief

Being a widow isn’t funny. Grief isn’t funny. But you know what!? Finding humor within the weight of grief is absolutely necessary because otherwise you will drive yourself nuts, and that’s just a fact.

Since becoming widowed, I have noticed this acute grief comes with a morbid sense of humor. For example, anyone who has lost someone knows how much crap you have to take care of when someone dies. So, when people would ask me what I was doing on a certain day and if I happened to have a ton of stuff to take care of that had to do with the fact that Justin is dead, I just started saying “Oh, I just have some Dead Husband Stuff to do”. It was more interesting and less exhausting than going into all the details of what the “dead husband stuff” involved, which was a TON and no one would even believe me if I told them all of it. At first, people would give me that awkward guilty smirk paired with the even more awkward head tilt when all I wanted from them was to chuckle because to me, it was hilarious.

There are some people from my life before that get this humor. My sister in law is one of them. A few weeks ago, me and my family all met up to face some more awful life circumstances but for a completely different reason than “dead husband stuff” (<– see it’s funny!). When she arrived, she brought a gift for us, they were socks with silly phrases like “Fuck this shit” with small animations of people getting electrocuted and my personal favorite “I hate everyone too” with a little girl petting a pony. Not going to lie on this, but sometimes it can feel like I hate everyone. Only because of everything I can deal with in a moment can make another’s existence and their “problems” feel so insignificant.  Then I remember, everything is relative and I try my hardest to grant some grace. So, with that being said, I obviously don’t literally hate everyone. It’s a JOKE. She came in with her funny fucked up socks and bag of Seattle chocolates to help lighten the mood. To try and get a laugh out of all of us which was EXACTLY what we needed. If that’s something that offends you, you need to lighten up. It’s funny and fucked up which is just what we need sometimes because that’s life.

Me and my Wids constantly talk about how almost comical it can seem when referencing all the things we’ve lost and all the things that one loss comes with.  Like, really, its funny guys! How does all this happen to one person right!? This grief can be so unbearably heavy that we try to find ways to make it lighter, because if you can’t do that, the weight will eventually break you. And how can you break something that is already broken? The humor is there to pick up our brokenness.

So, when we make a morbid widow joke, LAUGH! Please for the love of all that is good and departed <–😉, LAUGH WITH US! We are trying. We are trying so hard. We are trying to brand our heavy life with some lightness and that means you don’t have to feel depraved or guilty to laugh at a dumb, morbid, grief induced joke! All I know is that Justin would be laughing his ass off at my jokes, no matter how fucked up they are because what else is there to do other than to LAUGH!