Dancing on my grave.

About a million years ago when my Granny was dying I went to visit her in the hospital.  I was a semi serious tap dancing student at the time.  She was feeling pretty low and I was trying to cheer her up with stories of my odd and interesting friends.  My flatmate and I both had our tap shoes with us so we whipped them on and did a little tap tap around the room.  She laughed, the nurses laughed it was a fun moment.  Encouraged we tapped our way out of her room and around the floor.  Collapsing into giggles when a spectacularly bad shuffle ball change landed me in a rolling office chair.  It was the last time that I saw her alive. I have no idea what prompted me into our little show.  Desperation I guess, distraction from the obvious.

Many years late when my Mom was facing  a double mastectomy another friend and I put on an impromptu and highly inappropriate sock puppet show over the gurney as she was being wheeled into the operating suite.  Again, desperate to divert.

It's been my M.O. most of my life to look at most things through a humor filter.  I just don't see the point in ignoring the obviously funny, even in the face of grim truth.  Gallows humor is my specialty.  I know it's not for everyone.  But hey, neither is Candy Corn or Kale Chips.

Having had some big medical issues in the last few months It's been even more important for me be true to my own irreverent and sometimes inappropriate sense of humor.  We are all going to die.  Death and taxes and all that. I think it is disconcerting to some, I don't mean that I take death lightly, just that I find humor, even in grief, to be healing. A few weeks ago  I spent two nights in a row in two different emergency rooms with two creatures ( a boy and a dog ) that I love very much.  Even then I could see the ridiculousness of the situation.  The complete and utter  loss of control. It wasn't funny.  But it was.

For me, the idea that we have no control over the end times of our life is really quite liberating.  It could be a swift accident, a lingering illness or a peaceful slumber. Alone or in company.  Fast or slow. In a hospital, on a highway, at home.  I just don't know.  The trip to the Summerland may be fast  or it may be perilous; the only certainty is that it will happen.  Our society  prides itself on control, hold your temper, control those emotions, portion size! speed limits, rules, lines, policies...control. Humor, especially gallows humor fills a pretty big gap.  I may not know how to tell you that I have a pretty serious condition.  But I can sure joke about it.  I can make a funny and give you and me both a moment to collect before launching into the what's, the where's and the what's to be done.  Which is nothing, actually.  There is nothing to be done but watch and wait and see what my brain does with it's interloper cells. I can laugh and misdirect all I want.  It won't change the outcome, but it will make the living through part more about living and less about suffering. Humor, makes us human.


 As we head towards the part of the year where the veil is thinnest and I feel the presence of my ancestors ever more keenly I often feel like I catch a glimpse of them laughing along with me.  I can't control the moment of my death, but I can insist on dancing on my own grave.