Please stop laughing during the funeral
Please stop laughing during the funeral
Everyone copes differently, don’t judge me
Writer’s note: This post was first published on Medium’s “Tickled” on March 22, 2022 and will now be permanently housed on Substack’s new “Tickled” column.
I sat in the church pew quietly, daydreaming about past memories and thinking of my upcoming high school graduation. This was the second time I’d reached my graduation year, and a relative died. It was not a trend I was comfortable with and started making me dread graduations altogether. Out of the corner of my eye, I looked at my aunt, with tears streaming down her face as a man from the choir sang a solo in a cappella. She covered her mouth and wiped her eyes as he sang, with her shoulders continuing to shake. My eyes watered up too. Sadness struck. I hate funerals.
Recommended Read: “That time I made the Red Lobster crew cry ~ Why I grew to hate school graduations”
My mother looked over at me crying and asked my aunt to switch places with her, while my aunt continued to wipe away tears and fold over into the seat. At the time, I thought it was odd that my mother didn’t expect my aunt to comfort me. With tears still streaming down my face, I turned in the direction of my aunt, thinking I’d hug her and realized something else. My aunt was cracking up laughing.
My family has a strange sense of humor. We laugh at all the wrong moments. The phrase “laugh to keep from crying” is the best way to describe some of the antics we pull when the average person wouldn’t. The person who had passed away was my paternal grandmother. The woman laughing was her daughter. And the reason my aunt was laughing: She said the guy’s singing was so bad that she couldn’t keep it together, and she didn’t think my grandmother would like his singing either.