The Funniest Person in the Cemetery

My daughter died in 2015. She still makes me laugh.

It wasn't always like that. For the better part of ten years, memories of Maddie hurt. Even the funny ones came with something attached. Guilt. Regret. Sadness. The endless list of things I wish I had known.

Then something shifted. I started remembering the thing about Maddie that made me smile more than anything else.

She was so damn funny.

Not polite funny. Maddie had an off-the-wall sense of humour that could piss you off or leave you on the floor. Sometimes both.

And her laugh. You could hear it from the other end of the house. Loud, raucous, completely unapologetic. Half the time she'd push it harder than the joke deserved, because she knew it made everyone else laugh harder.

That was Maddie.

The week before her celebration of life, her mom and I still hadn't decided whether Maddie would be interred or whether we'd keep the urn.

So we joked that we might have to amend our divorce agreement. Visitation rights. For the urn.

We laughed. Our 14-year-old daughter had just died and we were making custody jokes about her ashes.

If we weren't laughing, we'd be bawling. And I was already dehydrated.

Grief is funny that way. Funny HAHA, and funny peculiar.

If you've lost someone you love, you might know that laugh. It comes out at exactly the wrong time, and right behind it comes the guilt. How the hell can I be laughing right now?

I used to feel that. I don't anymore. If there was one thing Maddie would have hated, it was everyone going unbearably serious or sad, whenever somebody said her name.

She was stubborn and kind, and absolutely brutal about my wardrobe. Around thirteen, in the middle of one of our disagreements, she looked at me and said we had trouble getting along sometimes because we were "more alike than we care to admit."

Thirteen years old. She had me figured out.

She didn't work alone, either. Her cousin Emma was her partner in crime. Two little shit disturbers.

They spent a lot of time together at my parents’ family cottage. My mom and dad would take them both for a week, and my mom never stood a chance.

They'd raid her closet and turn it into dress-up day. They got into her make-up. Mom would get infuriated.

Then the girls would calm her down.

"LOL, Grandma."

"What's LOL?" my mom would ask.

"Lots of love, Grandma. Lots of love."

My mom would just shake her head.

My Mom had three boys. She would claim even our pets were male. I know she quietly enjoyed the girl power.

Once I was single after the divorce, Maddie decided I clearly couldn't be trusted to find a woman on my own. So she took over. We'd sit at my computer going through dating profiles together. Thumbs up. Thumbs down. Definitely not. She wrote my profile and picked my pictures.

Her brothers wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

I technically had veto power. Technically. Maddie was the influencer.

She still is.

I can almost hear her now. "Who's screening them now that I'm not there?"

Then the follow-up, because Maddie always had a follow-up. "I still have to approve, you know."

And I know exactly what she'd say when Zac or Sawyer gave me a hard time.

"So who's your favourite child now, Dad?"

“Easy. The dead one.”

“Try competing with that, boys.”

Then there's her bedroom. It's pretty clean these days. I know what she'd say about that too.

"See, Dad? You finally got what you wanted."

That one makes me laugh. Then I usually stand there for a minute. The laugh doesn't mean the sadness left. Some days they sit right beside each other clamouring for attention.

Man, how events change context over time. What used to make my blood boil now makes me laugh. The context of loss eventually helps you see the humour in things. Even if they seem off-colour to everyone else.

Grief has also done something strange to my memory. I can watch the same show on Netflix three times and apparently enjoy a brand-new series every time. Maddie would have had a field day with that. She'd have mocked me for weeks, and I'd give almost anything to hear it.

For years, April 2015 was so loud it drowned out everything that came before it. I don't want that anymore.

Maddie lived for almost fifteen years. She laughed. She teased her brothers. She tormented her grandma. She drove me crazy. She gave me dating advice I didn't ask for and made fun of my clothes. She loved people. She filled rooms.

And she was really, really funny.

Her death is part of her story. It doesn't get to own the whole damn thing.

So yes, I make jokes about my daughter who's buried in a cemetery. Some people might find that uncomfortable. I'm okay with that.

When I think about Maddie now, I don't want the first sound in my head to be silence. I want to hear her laughing.

Somewhere, I suspect she's still laughing.

Probably at my shirt.

Maddie always did get the last laugh.

FAQ

Is it okay to laugh when you're grieving?
Yes. For me the guilt showed up right behind the laugh, every time, for years. Laughing doesn't mean you've stopped missing them. Some days the laugh and the sadness sit side by side.

Why do grieving people make dark jokes?
I can only speak for myself. Your brain goes looking for something to make you smile, because the alternative is too grim. The week before Maddie's celebration of life, a custody joke about her urn was the only thing that made her mom and me breathe.

How do you remember a child who died without only remembering the loss?
It took me close to ten years. What helped was remembering the specific stuff: her laugh, her opinions about my shirts, the trouble she caused at the cottage. Her death is part of her story, and so is everything else.

What should I say when a grieving parent makes a joke about their loss?
Laugh if it's funny. Don't correct them and don't go quiet. They're probably telling you something about the person they lost, so ask to hear more.

Does grief ever feel lighter?
I can't promise that, and I won't put a timeline on it. For me it changed around the ten-year mark, when I stopped trying to get back to who I was before.

You May Also Like

Please Don't Remember My Daughter for the Way She Died
Why I want people to remember Maddie's personality and humour, and not the day she died.

I'm Starting to Forget Things About My Daughter. And I Hate It.
Eleven years on, the small details are slipping, and it scares me.

Nobody Asks How the Brothers Are
What happens to the siblings of a child who died, and why people forget to ask about them.