The Funny Side of Death
by Aaron Hamburger
APRIL 21, 2011 TAGS:
A half-hour before my father died, my mother, my aunt, and two of my brothers and I were shrieking with laughter beside his hospital bed.
The night before, my mother and I had followed his ambulance to the hospital, where a kind doctor told us the terrible news in a firm, calm voice: My dad’s body was no longer able to process waste, which was now building up in his veins, turning his blood into toxic acid. There was no hope.
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As evening became night and then dawn, more family members slowly collected at Dad’s bedside: my brothers from Chicago and North Carolina, their wives, and then my aunt. Together we waited for the last of my brothers to arrive on a flight from Washington, D.C., at which point the nurses could pull the plug from my father’s ventilator.
We were all spent, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We were tired of sitting on vinyl hospital chairs, tired of listening to the Darth Vader huffing of that damned ventilator, tired of trying to flag down a nurse or doctor who might give us more or different information. Above all, we were tired of being in that strange limbo, during which my father was and was not alive, waiting for my brother to get to the hospital.
Suddenly my aunt spoke up. “Hilda,” she said to my mom, “do you remember when the four of us, me and Wally and you and Joel, flew to London and the airline lost our suitcases? And then there was that awful British lady scolding us, what was her name?”
My mother’s eyes, wet and red, widened. “You mean … Miss Havisham?”
“Yes, Miss Havisham!”
They started laughing as my brothers and I, confused, looked at each other. “Well, her name wasn’t really Miss Havisham,” my mother explained to us. “We made up that name for her because that’s what she was like. A Miss Havisham.”
“Imagine,” said my aunt, “the picture of a prim, proper British lady with mousy brown hair in a boxy tweed jacket and ugly comfortable shoes lecturing us in that high-tea-with-the-Queen accent about how it was really our fault the airline had lost our bags…”
“Because…” my mother chimed in between giggles, “we hadn’t marked them properly.”
“Oh, yes,” said my aunt in a faux British accent. “Didn’t we know how to properly check our bags? Really, what was wrong with us? And why were we smiling? This was no laughing matter. We’d failed to follow her airline’s simple instructions.”
“At first, we just sat there listening to her,” my mom said. “But then, we looked at each other and we all just started laughing. And Miss Havisham couldn’t understand why we were all laughing at her, and she got even more upset with us!”
My aunt and mother dissolved into laughter. And though we hadn’t been there, my brothers and I found ourselves laughing too.
Two years later, when I look back on the time of my father’s death, I’m surprised by how much laughter I remember.
For example, I remember the afternoon before my father was taken to the hospital, when he felt too weak to eat anything and kept pushing away his food, meat, rice, potatoes, vegetables, until my mother said, “Not even some pumpkin pie?”
Suddenly he perked up and replied in a wry tone, “Pumpkin pie? Well, maybe I could manage just a little.” Mom laughed as she spoon-fed him several bites. His favorite pie was the last thing he ate.
Before my father’s funeral, my aunt pulled me aside and asked what I planned to say. “I hope you say something funny,” she said. “Your father was a funny guy.”
So, during my eulogy, I recounted trying to explain e-mail to my father, who famously enjoyed playing a diehard traditionalist curmudgeon.
“Dad,” I’d asked him, “do you know what e-mail is?”
My father, who didn’t, shot back, “I know it’s something stupid.”
The audience paused for a moment, as if to ask for permission, then burst into laughter.
When it was my brother’s turn to speak, he made us laugh some more, remembering Dad’s famously gruff maxims:
“Don’t be the sheep, be the shepherd.”
“The longer the hair, the shorter the brains.”
“The more people you know, the more stupid people you know.”
And then there was Dad’s favorite response when asked to try something new: “I’d rather be boiled in oil.” Or, if someone asked him how he knew he didn’t want to do something before he’d actually tried it, my father would reply, “I’ve never been boiled in oil, but I know I wouldn’t like that either.”
After my brother and I finished our eulogies, we exited the chapel to march behind the coffin to the gravesite. I walked behind my sister-in-law, an extravagant dresser, who was wearing fluorescent lime-green high heels with black streaks, like race-car engines. I giggled as she kept explaining, “They’re the only black shoes I have,” even to people who didn’t ask about them.
Later, our family returned home from the cemetery to sit shiva, and we snickered over 1970’s polyester shirts, bell bottoms, and platform sandals in old family pictures. When the guests had gone, we laughed some more about a family friend who’d gone off on a 10-minute tirade about fresh and frozen challah, and how she could always tell the difference, and though the caterer had thought he could fool us by delivering frozen challah, our friend had not been fooled, no, not for one minute. And don’t get her started about frozen salmon…
So many things to laugh at — even in the news. John McCain had picked as his running mate the moose-hunting governor from Alaska. “Sarah Who?” said my sister-in-law, grateful to slip off her lime-green heels. “How could he pick her? She looks like Tina Fey!”
Maybe it’s a sacrilege to laugh in the face of death. But for my family, indulging in the humor of the moment was like eating a sweet and sour dish, in which one flavor accentuates and heightens the other. The sweetness doesn’t change the meal’s essential character. No one, for instance, would ever confuse orange-flavored chicken for a dessert or a tart lemon pie for a main course.
And in fact, during those difficult, disorienting days, every bit of mirth had an accompanying sour tang. After my parents laughed over the pumpkin pie, my father shat it out on the carpet of his study. After I killed the audience with my joke about my father’s aversion to e-mail, I helped to cover his coffin with dry earth.
And at my father’s deathbed, as we cracked up about the prim and proper Miss Havisham, our eyes brimming with tears because we were laughing so hard, a shadow darkened the door to his hospital room. The last of my brothers had arrived from Washington.
At first he looked at us in bewilderment. Then his expression turned to shock as he saw for the first time what we had had hours to adjust to: the sight of my father’s shuddering gray body, tied up in all those tubes.
My brother was here. So we stopped laughing.
My brother was here. So there was nothing left to wait for.
Now it was time to pull the plug.
Aaron Hamburger is the author of The View from Stalin’s Head and Faith for Beginners: A Novel. He teaches creative writing at Columbia University.
The night before, my mother and I had followed his ambulance to the hospital, where a kind doctor told us the terrible news in a firm, calm voice: My dad’s body was no longer able to process waste, which was now building up in his veins, turning his blood into toxic acid. There was no hope.
As evening became night and then dawn, more family members slowly collected at Dad’s bedside: my brothers from Chicago and North Carolina, their wives, and then my aunt. Together we waited for the last of my brothers to arrive on a flight from Washington, D.C., at which point the nurses could pull the plug from my father’s ventilator.We were all spent, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We were tired of sitting on vinyl hospital chairs, tired of listening to the Darth Vader huffing of that damned ventilator, tired of trying to flag down a nurse or doctor who might give us more or different information. Above all, we were tired of being in that strange limbo, during which my father was and was not alive, waiting for my brother to get to the hospital.
Suddenly my aunt spoke up. “Hilda,” she said to my mom, “do you remember when the four of us, me and Wally and you and Joel, flew to London and the airline lost our suitcases? And then there was that awful British lady scolding us, what was her name?”
My mother’s eyes, wet and red, widened. “You mean … Miss Havisham?”
“Yes, Miss Havisham!”
They started laughing as my brothers and I, confused, looked at each other. “Well, her name wasn’t really Miss Havisham,” my mother explained to us. “We made up that name for her because that’s what she was like. A Miss Havisham.”
“Imagine,” said my aunt, “the picture of a prim, proper British lady with mousy brown hair in a boxy tweed jacket and ugly comfortable shoes lecturing us in that high-tea-with-the-Queen accent about how it was really our fault the airline had lost our bags…”
“Because…” my mother chimed in between giggles, “we hadn’t marked them properly.”
“Oh, yes,” said my aunt in a faux British accent. “Didn’t we know how to properly check our bags? Really, what was wrong with us? And why were we smiling? This was no laughing matter. We’d failed to follow her airline’s simple instructions.”
“At first, we just sat there listening to her,” my mom said. “But then, we looked at each other and we all just started laughing. And Miss Havisham couldn’t understand why we were all laughing at her, and she got even more upset with us!”
My aunt and mother dissolved into laughter. And though we hadn’t been there, my brothers and I found ourselves laughing too.
Two years later, when I look back on the time of my father’s death, I’m surprised by how much laughter I remember.
For example, I remember the afternoon before my father was taken to the hospital, when he felt too weak to eat anything and kept pushing away his food, meat, rice, potatoes, vegetables, until my mother said, “Not even some pumpkin pie?”
Suddenly he perked up and replied in a wry tone, “Pumpkin pie? Well, maybe I could manage just a little.” Mom laughed as she spoon-fed him several bites. His favorite pie was the last thing he ate.
Before my father’s funeral, my aunt pulled me aside and asked what I planned to say. “I hope you say something funny,” she said. “Your father was a funny guy.”
So, during my eulogy, I recounted trying to explain e-mail to my father, who famously enjoyed playing a diehard traditionalist curmudgeon.
“Dad,” I’d asked him, “do you know what e-mail is?”
My father, who didn’t, shot back, “I know it’s something stupid.”
The audience paused for a moment, as if to ask for permission, then burst into laughter.
When it was my brother’s turn to speak, he made us laugh some more, remembering Dad’s famously gruff maxims:
“Don’t be the sheep, be the shepherd.”
“The longer the hair, the shorter the brains.”
“The more people you know, the more stupid people you know.”
And then there was Dad’s favorite response when asked to try something new: “I’d rather be boiled in oil.” Or, if someone asked him how he knew he didn’t want to do something before he’d actually tried it, my father would reply, “I’ve never been boiled in oil, but I know I wouldn’t like that either.”
After my brother and I finished our eulogies, we exited the chapel to march behind the coffin to the gravesite. I walked behind my sister-in-law, an extravagant dresser, who was wearing fluorescent lime-green high heels with black streaks, like race-car engines. I giggled as she kept explaining, “They’re the only black shoes I have,” even to people who didn’t ask about them.
Later, our family returned home from the cemetery to sit shiva, and we snickered over 1970’s polyester shirts, bell bottoms, and platform sandals in old family pictures. When the guests had gone, we laughed some more about a family friend who’d gone off on a 10-minute tirade about fresh and frozen challah, and how she could always tell the difference, and though the caterer had thought he could fool us by delivering frozen challah, our friend had not been fooled, no, not for one minute. And don’t get her started about frozen salmon…
So many things to laugh at — even in the news. John McCain had picked as his running mate the moose-hunting governor from Alaska. “Sarah Who?” said my sister-in-law, grateful to slip off her lime-green heels. “How could he pick her? She looks like Tina Fey!”
Maybe it’s a sacrilege to laugh in the face of death. But for my family, indulging in the humor of the moment was like eating a sweet and sour dish, in which one flavor accentuates and heightens the other. The sweetness doesn’t change the meal’s essential character. No one, for instance, would ever confuse orange-flavored chicken for a dessert or a tart lemon pie for a main course.
And in fact, during those difficult, disorienting days, every bit of mirth had an accompanying sour tang. After my parents laughed over the pumpkin pie, my father shat it out on the carpet of his study. After I killed the audience with my joke about my father’s aversion to e-mail, I helped to cover his coffin with dry earth.
And at my father’s deathbed, as we cracked up about the prim and proper Miss Havisham, our eyes brimming with tears because we were laughing so hard, a shadow darkened the door to his hospital room. The last of my brothers had arrived from Washington.
At first he looked at us in bewilderment. Then his expression turned to shock as he saw for the first time what we had had hours to adjust to: the sight of my father’s shuddering gray body, tied up in all those tubes.
My brother was here. So we stopped laughing.
My brother was here. So there was nothing left to wait for.
Now it was time to pull the plug.
Aaron Hamburger is the author of The View from Stalin’s Head and Faith for Beginners: A Novel. He teaches creative writing at Columbia University.
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Karol Bartlett wrote on April 21, 2011 6:02am
The thing that made us all laugh in a similar situation was when a neighbor brought over a homemade banana cream pie. Truth be told none of us could manage it but I gracefully accepted the pie and made a real fuss about it. When the neighbor left all of us just broke out in laughter. Even my ma who had just lost her partner of 58 years. I still think about that pie. It went home with one of my sisters and her husband ate it and said it was one of the best banana cream pies he had ever had. My guess is that my dad would have liked it also. Thanks for your blog post today. [Report Comment]
