Nowhere is the pastoral landscape more laced with emotional land mines than at funerals—not baptisms, not hospital visitations, not even weddings.
Funeral homes are haunted by hearts in sorrow. Family members gather grim-faced around the dead, their shoulders hunched with regret, guilt, and grief.
Into this brokenness walks the minister carrying only a toolbox full of words. Which words will you choose?
How about something funny?
Seriously.
Humor can be one of the most effective tools in lifting the burden of grief. Sometimes a gentle dose of laughter can be exactly what grieving families need to regrasp the joy of their loved one’s life.
At the memorial service for fellow golfer Paine Stewart, Paul Azinger faced an assignment that made number thirteen at Augusta National, arguably the hardest hole on the course, look as easy as a six-inch putt.
Stewart died in the prime of his life in a bizarre plane crash. In the audience were hundreds of mourners, among them Stewart’s wife and two young children.
Azinger stepped from behind the pulpit, rolled up his pants legs, stuffed the cuffs into a pair of dazzling argyle socks and donned an English driving cap. A risky move, but it worked. The audience roared with laughter.
Stewart, you see, was known for wearing knickers, colorful socks and eccentric caps on the golf course. Azinger’s act ministered to the grief of the congregation because it clearly reflected Stewart’s character and life.
I wouldn’t advise trying the same tactic, say, at the funeral of dear old Sister Johnson who chaired the ladies’ auxiliary. Unless, of course, she wore knickers and argyle socks.
If humor is to help people handle their grief, it has to make a natural connection with the deceased. Jokes almost never work. But true stories about the deceased can bring healing.
Finding the stories
When I’m called to perform a funeral, I troll around the family fishing for stories. When a family member begins a sentence, “Remember when … ” I start my mental tape recorder. When I see old men sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch of the funeral home smoking filterless cigarettes, I eavesdrop. Stories are to old men what smoke is to fire.
When laughter highlights a dim corner of the parlor, I’m drawn to it like fish to a flashlight beam. Often I ask the family members, “What’s your fondest memory? Your funniest memory? Would it be okay if I told that at the funeral?” I’ve yet to find a family that doesn’t want me to tell them the stories they already know.
At the recent funeral of a lifelong family friend, Robert, I told of the time he spilled a gallon of blue paint on his wife’s new shag carpet. In a vain attempt to clean up the mess before she discovered it, he tried sucking up the paint with a vacuum cleaner. The machine made a valiant effort but suddenly exploded, spraying paint all over the room and Robert.
“What was that noise?” his wife called from downstairs.
“Oh, nothing,” he replied in a calm voice. “You just stay down there and leave this to me.”
Hearing that story about their father helped his adult children deal with his death. In their memories he stood in a blue-spattered room with paint dripping off his nose. And they smiled.
When not to attempt humor
Sometimes it’s inadvisable to coax a smile out of a broken heart. When the death is a suicide, shock and anger and guilt rage within the souls of the grieving. I look in my box for other tools.
When the deceased is a child, it is as if laughter itself has died. The parents, grandparents, and siblings need a different kind of comfort.
I don’t use humor when I’m called to preach the funeral of a stranger. The family doesn’t know me, and I don’t know them. Shared experience is a prerequisite to humor.
Nor is laughter appropriate when the relationship between the deceased and those who have been left behind was in some way abusive. Laughter requires a vulnerability that may not be possible for those who are still emotionally—or physically—wounded.
Perhaps sorrow and humor are not really that far apart. They stand pretty close in Scripture: “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh” (Eccles. 3:4).
In life, our emotional schedules also synchronize, as in, “I laughed so hard I cried.” Why can’t we cry so hard we laugh? Through the years, I’ve learned it’s not only possible, sometimes it’s beneficial.
Jody Vickery is minister of Campus Church of Christ in Norcross, Georgia. vickery4@mindspring.com
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