If You Don't Laugh, You'll Cry
On Awkward Moments
Loss is full of awkward moments (understatement of the century). From the moment someone close to you dies, you are constantly navigating how to broach the topic, and there comes a time when you assume everyone who’s ever known your person has also become aware that they are dead. As you come to learn, that is not always the case, and in those moments, if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. Rest assured, there is hardly a moment more awkward than having to tell someone your dad is dead years after his passing while you’re just trying to buy some Oreos. And the reality is, this can happen at any time after the person has died. No one warned me about that.
Allow me to present to you 3 case studies of such awkward moments because this is grief work that needs to be brought to the surface, too.
Case Study 1: Growing up, my dad had a friend who was an incredible juggler. Apparently, when my dad lived in Colorado, he used to watch his friend juggle while skiing down the mountain. You can imagine the awe of having him at a childhood birthday party. They had sort of fallen out of regular communication as I grew older, but this juggler always sent a Christmas postcard. And they were always very distinctive, we knew they came from him. The first Christmas after Dad died, we received one such postcard from the juggler, and there was a moment of uncertainty – had he not yet heard that Dad died? I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this yet, but my family didn’t really advertise that Dad was sick, so it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that this guy hadn’t heard anything yet.
The bigger problem was that we weren’t sure that we had the juggler’s phone number. My dad was a big fan of nicknames, and you couldn’t always know who was who if you weren’t in on the joke, which meant that we might not even be able to tell if the phone number was there. But we had to tell him, right? So my brother did some digging and found a phone number we thought was attached to the address from the postcard. He gave it a ring, and we got a call back later that day. Here we were, our first Christmas without Dad, calling his old friend to say, “Hey thanks so much for the Christmas card, but actually Tim died this summer.” Awkward.
My brother handled that conversation, and with the maturity and grace I never mustered when it was my turn. And at 18 to boot. There was of course already a somber tone to that Christmas, but I remember wanting to crawl out of my body I was so uncomfortable at the idea of having to tell people this information over and over again for the rest of my life. But then we laughed at how bizarre and absurd the whole situation was because what else can you do? Laughter isn’t always indicative of joy; it’s just a form of emotional release from the body.
Case Study 2: About a year after my dad died, Mom and I were at a grocery store chain that Dad (and I) used to work at. We were at a different location than usual, but we still somehow managed to bump into one of his/my old coworkers. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, so I gave her a hug, and we got to chatting. Within minutes, she said, “Hey, how’s your dad?” Cue the record scratch in the movie version of my life.
I now had to break it to her that Dad had actually died, and my God, the way her face fell, I’ll never forget it. Because she had a high opinion of my dad, she was devastated and shocked by the news. I went on to tell her how he had been sick, blah, blah, blah. Another hug, and I found myself consoling her in that moment, which to be honest, was incredibly uncomfortable for me. I was just trying to buy snacks.
I want to pause here and say this has nothing to do with my old coworker. She is lovely and obviously she didn’t know what had happened, so she was completely within her right to be upset, and looking back, it’s nice to know there are people who were so moved by his death. It’s not the person who made this situation awkward, it’s just that the situation is awkward.
I often talk about how bizarre memorial services are (because they are), but at least with those there’s an abundance of “I’m so sorry” and awkward hugs, and then it’s over. After the service, I expected to be left alone for a while when it came to consoling others (often as they attempted to console me). Out in the wild like this, however, when you least expect to be having a grief moment, you don’t really know how to inform people of your dad’s death gracefully and then handle their emotions as well. As soon as we left her, back on track to get some snacks, my mom and I were in hysterics. It went into the fam group chat, because yes, when you have a Dead Dad, all of these awkward run-ins go into the group chat. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. And not that crying wouldn’t be an appropriate response as well, but something about laughing lets it out that bit better for me.
Case Study 3: One thing we haven’t done since my dad died is change our answering machine. His voice is the recording, and it’s a bit weird to hear, but it’s also comforting. I’ll talk about the comforts of sound in depth later. Anyway, when people call the house phone, they get my dad. That’s all well and good if you know he’s dead, and I know some family even find comfort in calling just to hear his voice on the machine. If you don’t know he’s been gone 8 years, however, that voice would certainly be misleading.
About a year or two ago, my mom received a message from a man whose name she vaguely recognized. In the message, he asked for Tim, but you see, the problem with naming your child after you is that sometimes you can’t be sure which Tim is being referred to. Compound that with one of the Tim’s being dead, and you have moments full of “Should I open this,” or “Do you think this message is for Tim or Timmy?”
In this particular message, the man was asking about some work he needed done on his house. My dad was a handyman, so it was easy to deduce that the Tim was Dead Dad. My mom was the reluctant recipient of this awkward moment. To her, this man was essentially a stranger, yet she felt rude not responding. So, she’d have to tell him Dad was dead. The process went a little something like this: first, she had to call the guy and introduce herself. Then she broke the news, not really knowing the nature of my dad’s relationship with the guy. Had Dad done a lot of work for this man previously? Was Dad recommended to this man by another person who didn’t know he’d died either? Would this be a long conversation with a lot of shock and emotion? How deep might this go?
Ultimately, I think the conversation was generally succinct. People don’t tend to stay on the phone too long when they feel uncomfortable. I wonder if there’s anything written in any etiquette books on how to appropriately have a conversation about death on the phone? Probably not. Once again, when my mom called me to tell me about this, all I could do was laugh. In a moment, we’re reminded that the entire world didn’t shift when he died, just ours did.
Such is life with a Dead Dad. I’m sure I could consult my family and relay a hundred more moments like this. If I had a nickel, and all of that. When it comes to informing those who knew him that he’s dead, I imagine that most everyone knows at this stage. But I’ve been proven wrong before, so I’m sure there are many awkward moments like this in my future. And even if every person who’s ever met him now knows he’s dead, it doesn’t change the fact that I will forever have to introduce this aspect of my life to new people I meet and get to know. It’s a delicate game I play, figuring out exactly how to mention it, but more on that later. For now, I just want you to know about this one aspect of grief and loss that isn’t in the guidebook. Now it is.