When It’s Inappropriate, Laugh

Content Warning: Death, illness

My mom was a vivacious person. She had bright blue eyes that matched her personality, a roar of a laugh that could make an entire theater laugh in response, and compassion that spread to every person with whom she came in contact. She was only fifty-one when she died, but she lived a life full of love and laughter, sharing it with those she worked with. At forty, my mom had turned her life around from working jobs she didn’t enjoy and being embarrassed about not having her high school diploma. She proved it’s never too late to get your GED, go back to college, and start over. She obtained her Bachelor’s in Psychology and Sociology, graduating with Honors and entering a field in which she would help hundreds of people. In a short time, my mom became a silent soldier helping those struggling with addiction. She was the first voice people would hear when calling for help when they felt like they had nowhere to go. Her compassion, and what I had only known to be a very loud voice, was calm and soothing to those looking to find light in a very dark time.

Mom was proud to grow up in the ‘80s; hair bands and John Hughes flicks were her thing. She loved independent films and true crime–before they became mainstream. She was also a franchise junkie. Marvel, Fast & Furious, Rocky Balboa, and more recently the Mission Impossible series–she loved them all. She watched the entirety of the Depp v. Heard trial, and found even the most minute details interesting, such as the way a pillow was found, or where a pill bottle would be in accordance to the scene. She loved to learn.

Most importantly, she loved her three children. Even through the hardest of times, Mom gave us a world full of love and laughter. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so board games were always a special treat and something my siblings and I enjoyed doing, even to this day. With board games, we were able to be our truest selves and really let our silly sides blossom. She had a lot of hardships in life, but she knew laughing could fix a lot. Except for cancer.

On June 20, 2022 my mom was diagnosed with stage IV gallbladder cancer that had metastasized to a number of major organs, progressing to the point of no return. She was only fifty-one.

During Mom’s illness, my siblings and I had to find as much light as possible, and this meant laughing at the little things, like when Mom thought she was blind. When someone is battling cancer they can accumulate calcium in the body, which may affect the patient’s mental state. Mom’s calcium levels were incredibly high, and she was not always herself mentally.  It was hard to talk her into things, especially going to the hospital. One day, Mom wasn’t feeling well and asked if we could take her to the hospital. I had to move quickly before she changed her mind. As I was getting everything together, Mom said to me, “There’s something wrong, Stefanie. Something is really wrong.” “Okay, Mom, we’re going to the hospital,” I exclaimed. “No,” she said with genuine fear, “Something is really wrong….I can’t see.” Naturally, this scared me.  I stopped what I was doing, bent over to look her in the eyes only to discover that her eyes were closed. I took her hands and said, “Mom, open your eyes.” She slowly opened them and as soon as she saw me smiling at her she laughed—it wasn’t as thunderous as it had been once upon a time, but I knew for her in this state, she was hysterical.

There were other things that still make me laugh—how she acted her first time on Dilaudid, or her first experience with edibles, or her constant fear of becoming a drug addict. Becoming a drug addict isn’t funny. She tried to refuse the opioids she needed to control her pain, saying, “I’m scared I’ll be addicted after all of this.” My sister and I looked at each other, smirked and reassured Mom it was going to be okay. We would cross that bridge when we got there. The fear of her becoming an addict was so my mom.

Fourteen weeks after her diagnosis, Mom was back in the hospital. I noticed that her leg was swollen and blood clots had already been an issue. I just thought to myself, “Fuck, another blood clot.” Only a couple of hours later her oncologist had come in to break the news that Mom’s body was shutting down, and she was going to be dead… soon. There was no laughter, just a lot of crying. My siblings and I made the decision to bring our mom home and let her die with hospice support.

Hospice is actually a beautiful thing. When Mom died, she was at home surrounded by her loved ones. Our entire family had traveled to the desert town of Lancaster to say goodbye to her. It was the last day she was conscious, so she, too, got to say her goodbyes. Believe it or not, this day was filled with so much laughter. My family shared stories about my mom. My Aunt Jayne talked about how she hated Mom when she was little because here was this cute new baby, and from then on Jayne knew she would no longer be anyone’s baby. It was all about Shannon.

In her delirium, Mom demanded everyone give her money. She was a dying woman, how could they refuse her? Due to the inheritance my siblings and I would be receiving soon, the money she asked for gained us just upward of one-hundred and sixty dollars. Thanks Mom! A family full of women, we surrounded my mom. My cousin Heather is the only truly religious person amongst our family. My mom looked up at her and said, “Heather, pray for me.” Heather obliged and began to say a prayer. About thirty seconds later Mom replied, “Heather be quiet.” We all just laughed.

Every day the hospice nurse would check in on Mom. “Today is most likely the day,” she’d say to us. She would continue to tell us that for the next five days. It got to the point where we didn’t believe she was ever going to die. She just lay there unconscious, quiet until we rolled her over. Even with all of the drugs in her system, rolling her over was incredibly painful, but we didn’t want her to get bed sores. My siblings and I gathered around our mom and routinely rolled her on her side after which she’d exclaim, “FUCK!” We apologized, knowing how much it hurt, but it had to be done. I bent down next to Mom and said, “Mom, if you don’t say anything else, fuck will be your last word.” She wasn’t verbal at this point, her eyes wouldn’t even open, but I knew she heard me because she smiled. Her last word would be “fuck.”

On Wednesday, September 28, 2022, just fifteen weeks after her initial diagnosis, Mom passed away. She died on my great-grandmother’s birthday, and I whispered in her ear, “You’re one hell of a birthday present.”

The hospice nurse declared Mom dead and called the funeral home for us. The undertaker would arrive in a couple of hours. My grandma and I knew we wanted to clean Mom as best as we could—braid her long, wavy hair and dress her in her favorite outfit. It would take time, but we had two hours. So we thought.

We received a knock on the door, and the undertaker was a character from a Tim Burton movie. Tall and lanky with dark hair, dressed in black, with a gaunt, pale face. His gravelly voice indicated he didn’t talk to people much. He showed up in a tan minivan, only thirty minutes after the nurse called the funeral home. We told him we weren’t ready. “No problem. I’ll grab a coffee down the street. Call me when you’re ready.” He moved like Jack Skellington and headed towards his van. The van he was driving could have belonged to anyone; there was no advertisement on the car saying it was from the funeral home. Our paranoid and sleep-deprived minds were worried he somehow infiltrated the funeral home call-line. Fortunately, our friends had used the same service for their grandma and assured us he was legit.

As we prepared her body, we used baby wipes to give her a quick wipe down. I was wiping her face when all of a sudden I swiped her eyelid and her shiny blue eye was staring up at me. I squealed and jumped. Here we were bathing this corpse, and her one eye looking at me gave me the full-body heebie-jeebies. My grandma asked what happened and I said, “I accidentally opened her eye.” “Yeah, sweetie, you shouldn’t do that.” I closed her eye. “I didn’t do it on purpose.” I had one more shiver move throughout my body, and then I continued to prepare my mom for her final departure.

We called the undertaker and he was there promptly. He was very kind, and very respectful of my mom’s body. But this poor man! We were still in complete shock and none of us wanted to leave Mom’s side, so we watched him prepare her for transport. He was delicately taking the sheets she lay on and wrapping her like a Dia De Los Muertos burrito. With her oxygen machine turned off, the room was eerily silent as the undertaker went to work. He was sweaty, struggling to tie the knots with the sheet. His rubber gloves had ripped, exposing his pale hands. It was an awkward silence at the highest level.

My sister leaned over, “It’s so quiet.” “What? You don’t like the dead silence?” I retorted. We both giggled. My sister turned on her record player to whatever was playing last, and Prince began with, “Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today to get through this thing called life.” All of us looked around and smiled, a perfect song for my mother who we were sending into the unknown.

After the undertaker had fully packed my mom up, we signed some paperwork, and he headed out towards his tan minivan. We followed them down the path through the front yard. The sun was setting but it was incredibly bright, maybe because we had been cooped up in the house the last five days. We watched him load our mom into the van and set off into the sunset. Sort of. We knew he’d have to pass by our house again to get back to the funeral home, so we all stayed in the front yard, anticipating the return of the tan minivan. Once the van emerged, we erupted in goodbyes, enthusiastically waving, laughing and cheering as our mom went on without us. The van was gone in a flash and we returned to the house with smiles on our faces.

It’s been eighteen months and our grief has become something we’ve learned to live with. We now know it never goes away. We laugh when we talk about Mom. We cry when we miss her, but we always chuckle afterwards and declare, “Good cry.” We laugh when my brother tells people the undertaker came in and carried our mom out like a suitcase, because the image of it is hilarious. Making dead-mom jokes has become our favorite pastime and to see the uneasy feeling our friends and family get is so satisfying. They’ve gotten used to the jokes, but every now and then, we manage to sneak one in. We laugh because it’s what our mom would do, and it’s what she’d want us to do.

Sometimes you’re presented with the most horrifying experiences, but it’s important to find the humor because you might have lost track of the last time you laughed. It’s such a salient and simple part of being a human, and being human isn’t always easy, so we laugh to feel human, even (or maybe especially) when it isn’t appropriate.