“Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward — and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.”
Comedian and "Conan" writer Laurie Kilmartin is, at the time of this posting, watching her father pass away. She and her mother and sister are doing all of the things that families often do when a loved one is in their last days: they’re helping him to the bathroom, organizing visits with grandchildren, professing their love again and again, reassuring him it’s ok to go, watching and waiting, waiting, waiting.
And the one other thing they’re doing is laughing.
The reason we know what Kilmartin is going through is because she has been live tweeting the entire experience. And before you tsk-tsk the whole thing as another sad emblem of "the way the world is now," you should go back and look at the posts. If you’ve ever lost a parent, you will most likely relate. If you have yet to, you may find something that will one day help you cope with your own loss.
Among the myriad tweets are wry observations of the day-to-day business of dealing with a sick parent…
https://twitter.com/anylaurie16?orig…w_p=tweetembed
Laurie Kilmartin Is Live Tweeting Her Father’s Last Days… And It Is Heartbreakingly Funny
Personally, i’d LOVE it if my Daughter did something like this. My life has been one of humor, normal and NOT normal.