Black Comedy

Recently, someone recommended that I listen to Tig Notaro's standup on her cancer.  My therapist, actually.  She said that she thought a lot of what Tig discusses would resonate with me.  Cancer and dead babies share some common ground.  Nobody treats you normally anymore if you have either one.  Both bring conversations to a screeching halt.  At one point or another, you'll have to console someone because they're just having such a hard time taking your bad news.  And both make you feel as though you're living some terrible soap opera. 

A short segment of the show was aired on This American Life a couple weeks ago.  The complete work can be found HERE, and is well worth the $5 if you've got it.

It's amazing.  And my therapist is right: she totally resonates with me.  So strongly that I sat down and wrote a piece of fan mail (ZOMG!!!!!1!)  I've never written fan mail before, not even in my most ardently awkward teenage years as an x-phile.  (That's what we called ourselves.  Really.) 

I waited until I was 30 years old, and then subjected Ms. Notaro to my drooling fandom instead. 

Kate Beaton illusted my favorite-ever depiction of fan mail

In case you're wondering, no she hasn't written back.  But who can blame her?  The girl has CANCER!  Which is the best excuse.

What's so amazing to me about this standup is not that it makes cancer funny, it's that I'm not the only freak who lives through a tragedy with a constant commentary of dark jokes running through my head.  I know enough not to share them, mostly.  But they're in there, rattling around.  In the very darkest days of losing Laurel, I laughed quite a bit.  Don't get me wrong, I cried a ton, too.  I cried until I had cried myself out, and then I started crying again.  But that was done mostly in the safety of my own home.  Outside of my home, I laughed.  It's a response that has, at times, made me feel like an alien among others in grief.  I try not to beat myself up about it.  After all.  My baby died.  And that is the best excuse.

 ***

There is a bunny (or two, or, knowing bunnies, probably a family of five hundred) that lives on the playground at Elsie's preschool.  The other day, I was volunteering at a school event.  It had rained hard the previous night, and debris from small flash floods was all over the place.  A child pointed out the window and said,

"Look!  There's the bunny!" 

And there was the bunny!  Wet, covered in dirt, splayed out on its side in a big, washed-out delta of mulch. 

"Oh!"  I said, "the bunny is dead!" 

Another mom shot me a frantic shut-up! look

"Uh-oh," she replied cheerfully, through a clenched smile, "There's a D-E-A-D B-U-N-N-Y on the playground!"

It caught me like a slap across the face.  This woman was trying to shelter her child from the natural death of a small, wild rodent. People actually feel that they need to (and that they CAN!) shelter their children from death.

"Oh!  I get it.  You know, Elsie has a D-E-A-D S-I-S-T-E-R.  We're really over the dead bunnies in our family." 

I think this is hilariously funny.  Our school puts such a tremendous emphasis on cultural and family diversity.  It is talked about constantly.  Across all cultures death is one of the ONLY things that is universal.  To talk about it like that while also giving a big dose of perspective makes me smirk.  But I can't say it, because nobody else will find it funny at all. So I gather every oz of my self restraint and use it to purse my lips and give an ambiguous, "Hmmm." 

Not Tig Notaro.  She gets up on stage and she says it.