Grief and the Necessary Comic Relief

Comedy has found its role in our home during a period of the beginnings of ambiguous grief – not knowing whether our unborn child will survive, and if he or she does, what survival might require or even look like.

There is the ever present depressed gait in grief. Thoughts of loss are the undercurrent of the mental landscape. Feelings of what might soon be gone are the ambience of something disturbed within the spirit.

There has to be something that would keep us buoyant; something that brings life a certain levity for the sake of endurance. And they say that laughter is the best medicine. It certainly helps. It doesn’t mean that the horrible circumstance fades or disappears – we are realistic enough to know that reality is so real as to be unchangeable.

Comic relief is necessary in grief. Not the sort of comic relief that is irreverent, but the sort that helps us connect with that part of our story that is untainted by sadness, which is an emotion all too real.

Gallows humour is something that has an application when life has lost some or all of its hope, provided that we can honour the Lord of life.

God knows, of all, that we need space and the opportunity for relief. We are too easily driven too far in this life, and too often do we push ourselves to exhaustion.

This is why there is so much stock in being gentle with ourselves. When we stop along the roadside enough to sink our senses into the experience of the present we truly worship God in gratitude.

Comic relief is relief in grief. It’s not for all times, but it is for some times.

***

All of grief is too much for one,

Without some cool or comic escape,

There must indeed be times for space,

That would give us relief from this scrape.

There are some things that are too much for us and God knows it.

Some relief is what we all need. When thoughts get too much and feelings inflict pain, there is the relief of space that brings a freedom beyond words; the simple and unadulterated experience of peace.

God knows when and how we need relief and a necessary comic relief is relief indeed. Will you venture with such a gift when you are pressed past your limit? Will you use it when you get close to your limit?

Humour is genuine appreciation for life, especially when life has gotten too heavy.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.