By Kerri Havnen Gordon

It had been a great day. I was with three other women, two of whom I liked very much but didn’t yet know well. We were at the beach for a girls’ weekend and had spent the day window shopping and gabbing. At one point when the women were talking about their parents, one of them asked me where mine were. I burst out laughing because I figured they were expecting me to say something like “Sunnyvale,” but what I was thinking was “6 feet under,” and I couldn’t very well say that. And so the giggling began.

There is, after all, no cheerful way to tell people about loved ones dying in plane crashes. On the scale of jaw-dropping, conversation-stopping topics, it ranks right up there. After 30 years, I have had plenty of time to get used to the idea, but for everyone else, it is horrific news that can’t help but be mood dampening. I admit that it’s not always easy to instantly switch from chipper to dour to accommodate the sudden conversation shift.

So when I laughed at my new friend’s question, I found that I could not stop. And the more I laughed the more absurd it became to tell them about the tragedy. That, I knew, I could eventually do. Explaining the laughter would be altogether more challenging. What a pickle my gallows humor had gotten me into! When I finally collected myself enough to tell them, they looked at me like I had a screw loose, and how can I blame them? They may think I’m a little weird now, but they do still return my phone calls.

When the unfunny becomes inexplicably funny, incurable giggles often follow. A few years ago, a friend’s teenage son lay critically injured in an ICU unit and was visited by a distant uncle. My friend’s sister said to her, “If Geoff wakes up now, he’s going to say, ‘Dang. Uncle Mike is here. I barely know him. I must be in really bad shape.’” This struck the sisters’ funny bones. The giggles came and persisted uncontrollably, even though the boy’s condition was still dire. Such is the nature of gallows humor.

The late Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh once wrote, “Tragedy is underdeveloped comedy.” Have you noticed that family funerals are often ripe for comic relief? If your family is anything like mine, it usually starts with an innocuous comment about the recently deceased, often with a reference to the dearly departed as if they are still around. This is followed by a moment of stunned silence and quick eye contact before everyone dissolves into laughing fits that go on and on. Sometimes gallows humor is the only way to get through the wake and the days that follow.

This sort of hysterical laughter is slightly inappropriate, highly contagious and occasionally embarrassing. Tears are often involved, and we all know that there is a fine line, indeed, between laughing and crying. And since one is not always inclined to cry, whether it be at a funeral or even 30 years later, laughter will have to suffice, and it just may heal as well as the tears do.

So next time you witness a case of gallows humor, please cut the afflicted party some slack. We’re not insensitive; we just can’t help ourselves. For many of us, such humor runs in the family. We hope you understand and, if we are still laughing, feel free to join in.