I’ve always joked that Irish Catholics respond to tragedy with laughter.
Maybe it’s some quirk in my upbringing. But I often follow up anything serious I say, be it a rough day at work, or a reference to something difficult that I experienced in the past, with a “hahaha.” Friends who text me frequently can attest to this.
In mundane matters, the response can be perfectly appropriate. Yet, for serious matters, like those considering pain, loss, mortality, it can seem inappropriate. Maybe it is inappropriate. I’ve always been unclear on this.
The other day, while speaking to my psychiatry attending about the patients we had met with that morning, we came onto the topic of laughter. About one of our patients who kept laughing intermittently between heavy, silent tears. He would always go on a monologue when he did this, saying he laughed because it was the only way he could accept that he was going to die, that he was going to die soon. He had end-stage lung cancer.
Afterward, my psychiatry attending and I discussed whether this coping mechanism was appropriate or not. This eventually devolved into a discussion about our favorite comedy shows. We had a five-minute aside about the humor of South Park. About whether certain topics should not be joked about - like current events, issues about race, death. For some reason, I found myself asking him if he’d ever read Reinhold Niebuhr, seeing that my attending is an Ole grad like myself. He had not.
I mentioned an essay that had struck a chord with me in college, titled “Humor and Faith.” In it, Niebuhr talks at one point about how both “humor and faith are expressions of the human spirit, of its capacity to stand outside of life, and itself, and view the whole scene (p. 49).” Yet, he continues, the problem with viewing the whole scene are all the inconsistencies contained there. The incongruities of reality that conflict with our narrative. For instance, to reference a Louis C.K. stand-up bit, we complain about waiting 30-minutes for an airplane, yet afterward we FLY THROUGH THE AIR, LIKE A BIRD. The disconnect between our complaints and the fact that we are flying, which from this new perspective is miraculous, causes us to laugh. Yet inconsistencies exist in other ways: I am alive now yet one day I will die. How can this be?
We as humans do not usually laugh about this. Though maybe I would. As I’ve said, it’s a habit of mine.
Niebuhr continues with the conclusion that faith is an appropriate response, as faith can reconcile the “incongruities of existence which threaten the very meaning of life (p. 50).” Yet faith has other effects. For instance, the fact it nearly drove me to suicide in college over the issue of my sexuality. It is funny - people often ask me why I continue to defend religion, even though it nearly destroyed much of my adolescence. My response: “Because it was a beautiful enough vision that I was willing to sacrifice everything, even my entire identity, to make it true.” Even in the absence of faith, I still strive to find that beauty. Maybe that is why I write.
Maybe it’s why I laugh.
I’m reminded of a passage in Elie Weisel’s work, ‘Night,’ documenting his experiences in the Holocaust. In a class in college, we discussed the issue of theodicy in his work - theodicy being a theological query into why evil exists in the world. Most of us came to the conclusion that he no longer believed in God. Yet there is a scene where a man plays fiddle deep into the night, and the tears it provoked in the Jews as they were corralled in a tiny barracks. When they awoke, he was frozen. Dead. It has a strange tragic beauty, and this beauty always felt to me as if Weisel were asking a question. Is this God, he seems to ask? These moments of humanity, of complete vulnerable, mortal beauty, in the face of so much suffering?
A few days ago, I attended a speech appointment for a patient of mine with ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The disease represents one of the more aggressive motor neuron diseases, usually beginning as weakness in a hand or foot, and spreading to the muscles that allow us to swallow and breath. Most patients die in 3-5 years after the presentation of their first symptom.
At the current appointment, they’re recording his voice. For when he can no longer speak and be understood. Phrases such as “I’m hungry” and “I love you.” Later, he will be able to speak these phrases so people can hear him in his own voice. At the end of the appointment, the speech pathologist checks the audio file and notes, “You’ve got about 316 phrases right now. Is that enough for you? Or is there more you would like to be able to say?”
A life. An entire life. In 316 pre-recorded phrases. I feel something but I bury it, opening up my cell phone e-mail inbox.
Afterward, the speech pathologist goes over a few learning points. “We try to keep things that he would actually say.” He points to a few off-color ones, such as “Fuck you” and “Nice ass.” Then he plays one of laughter. He nods vigorously. “These are the most important recordings,” he states emphatically. “If you cannot speak, you at least should be able to laugh if something is funny. Studies have shown it builds a greater relationship between the patient and future providers.”
He plays the track. We hear laughter. 2.12 seconds of it. We shake hands and I leave the room.
Later, I’m driving home, one of those chilly nights where the heater from your car blazes your fingers while you feet grow cold. An episode of ‘This American Life’ emanates from my phone in the coffee cup slot. They’re talking about time machines and the many reasons people would use them. About half of people will change history (usually, killing Adolf Hitler) and the other half will change some part of their past (not get in the subway because that guy will vomit on you).
One woman comes on toward the end and says, “I would change the last conversation I had with my husband before he died.” She describes that it was over tupperware, on the phone. That she hadn’t ordered it and her husband asked her why. Because, she noted, the ordering catalogue was on his truck dashboard. And he was driving on the other end of the phone, and looked, and saw the catalogue right in front of him.
“And then we laughed about it,” she chuckles dryly. A few moments of silence. You can hear the static of the microphone.
Then she continues, more somber, “At least we laughed.”
