I Laugh at The Worst Times!

Once at a wedding, twice at a funeral. Plenty of times during meetings and plenty of times at church. Once as juror number 1 at trial in front of God, the judge and everyone in the courtroom. (I thought I was in trouble but the judge recessed thank God. Only time can stop it, usually 5 minutes or so. No it’s not a disorder, I just find things funny sometimes and laughing makes me laugh harder. (I’m often joined by others, lol.) I suppose there are worse problems.

I’ve heard of this disorder. Can you stifle it, if needed?

I'll never forget when my grandfather died. We're at the funeral home at the end of the funeral and my grandmother wanted to go stand at the coffin in the room alone while my foster brother played "The Old Rugged Cross", which was my grandfather's favorite hymn.

We were all pretty ragged about the death because we loved my grandpa tremendously. We're sitting in the "family room" and listening to the organ playing. Now my foster brother was a very, very good organist (he was blind) but he tended to wander over into his Liberace personna at the drop of a hat. He started out light on the song but pretty soon started adding crescendos and trills and fol-de-rols. It was like a musical roller-coaster (by the way, Grandma LOVED it). It got louder and wilder.

One of us started giggling and then we all started. We'd stop and get ourselves under control and then make the mistake of looking at each other and it would all start up again. My mother is hissing at us to stop before Grandma came back into the room, but we couldn't. We just couldn't. The emotional strain of the past few days caught up with us and we cracked.

Finally, we had to all go to the restroom and splash cold water on our faces to calm down. It's amazing what grief and strain can do to your emotions. Grandma would have been beyond upset if she had seen us, but we weren't doing it to be disrespectful........we couldn't help ourselves. Luckily, we looked like we had been crying when we came out, so all was well.

I can't help but feel Grandpa would have thought it was funny. He had a great sense of humor.

Dark inappropriate humor is something that has always helped to power me and many members of my family through some pretty rough times in our lives.

We are aware of it and do try to tone it down but honestly we aren’t always successful.

I was hopeless at trying not to laugh at church, there was always something that would set me off.
It happened again about 5 years ago at my youngest grandson's school.

We all gathered in the school chapel, which honoured the school graduates who would be leaving for high school the next year.
It was stifling hot, and we were all fanning ourselves with the program booklet, when this poor child went up for communion and projectile vomited all over the priest. Everyone caught their breath.

My youngest son, who was standing right next to me, leaned over and whispererd "Pea Soup."

That was the end of me. I had to leave and compose myself outside, which never happened.

I went to England with my mom. Sort of church conference, very serious. We had to run outside. Also in a boring museum with my mom and brother. And at my grandma's funeral.