Laughing With the Grim Reaper

When my mother was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2009, I didn’t know how to respond. When my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2012, still, I didn’t know how to respond. When my mother died of cancer in 2014, I just didn’t respond.

Fortunately, everyone around me seemed to have words to share for how I should act and for how I should feel. Unfortunately, most of those words did not help me understand or process my grief.

When my mother died, I realized how incredibly awkward people get about death. The topic of death can make the most well-spoken person become a fumbling mess of incoherent ‘support’. It’s understandable too. Death is taboo, and most of us don’t like talking about it. It’s sad. It’s depressing. It’s unknown. It’s what we have all been taught to fear. Death. But as someone who has seen her dearest one die, who’s held the hand of her dead mother, who’s felt the ashes of that person, I want to tell people—it’s okay to laugh about and be comfortable with death.

I often make jokes at my mother’s expense. She was a traffic engineer who couldn’t parallel park and got giddy at the sight of a round-about. She was an immigrant who had lived for 40+ years in this country and couldn’t pronounce the word “salmon.” She was fucking hilarious.

I was walking along with a friend who commented, “I don’t know what to get my mom for Mother’s Day.”

With no hesitation, I replied, “I don’t have that problem.” I laughed. But my friend didn’t. Death jokes make people uncomfortable, so I’ve learned to hold back the dark humour for a select few.

When we run away from death, we run away from reality. And reality will always catch up. I tried to run away for two years. I left the city, the country, the continent to “study and travel”, but really it was to escape. To leave the mess of sadness behind for some time. And when I finally came back, reality knocked me down and left bruises.

The one shared experience we will all have, no matter our background, our family, our health, will be death. It’s a simple fact that death is a natural part of the life cycle. We all die. And I think it’s wise for us to stop running away from death and the difficult conversations around death—but rather, to run into them and embrace them. Be open, honest, and genuine—and listen.

It’s only when I began allowing myself to laugh at death, to be happy and comfortable talking about my dead mom, then I was able to address my grief and move forward with my life. My mom is gone. It sucks. But it’s also reality. And I accept death. I accept my own death will come, and the deaths of those around me. So, when I make death jokes I invite you to laugh with me.

by Joanne Katherine Gall