I’ve been trying to phrase this question since I read about the drunk driver who decapitated his friend and apparently didn’t notice, leading to these and no doubt thousands of other jokes around the world. I thought that for myself, I really wouldn’t mind. My friends depend on me for home grown wit, and a ridiculous death would be oddly appropriate. Though all in all I would much rather be killed by someone else’s stupidity than my own. But I don’t want to get into a debate about whether we care care after we’re dead, as I’m an atheist myself, and I’m damn sure I wouldn’t care one way or another.
So what if it wasn’t you but someone close? A spouse or sibling perhaps, or just a good friend. Would all the jokes make you laugh or drive you nuts?
I’m pretty sure it would infuriate me to have someone else make light of a friend or family member’s death, even if it was something absurd. It’s just one thing I try not to joke about.
I fully expect to die in a freak bookcase accident. Like the famous philosopher who got himself killed when he pulled out a copy of the Talmud and the bookcase came with it.
I hope I’m never in such a situation, but if it did happen, I’d be horrified to see it listed on a “Darwin Awards” type of site. Definitely not something that would consoling to me. Nobody wants their loved one to be remembered in a disrespectful way.
Wow, something like this happened to my wife at work last week. One gal was telling how a friend from her home town had just died over the weekend.
Wife: How did he die?
Gal: I don’t want to tell you. You’ll laugh.
W: What?!? I won’t laugh. I swear!
G: Promise?
W: Promise.
G: He got run over… by a donkey.
W: (Says nothing…)
G: …
W: (Starts to tear up.)
G: Oh my God, just laugh already!
W: (Laughs.)
So I guess she wasn’t too upset. For one thing, W didn’t initiate the joke. And since G knew that W would laugh and still told her…
Anyway, if a “traumady” ever happened to anyone I knew, I would probably be sad… then I would LMAO, then I would be sad when I realized the pain that the person experienced in their last moments, then I would laugh again when I imagine what the look on their face must have been like. And so on until I died at which point I would promptly burn in hell… :eek:
My brother once got hit by a car (well, the car got hit by him, really) and at the time I couldn’t tell anyone without losing it and laughing. But at that point in time, it was probably a defense mechanism I was using to avoid having to think about the unpleasantness of it all.
I think it would piss me off, yes; to know that your buddy selflessly laid down his life saving a doe-eyed, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired innocent child from certain death by a runaway steamroller would be easier to stomach than, say, knowing that he got drunk and peed on the third rail, or dared someone to cut off his legs with a chainsaw.
I would be really upset because people would take it upon themselves to see it as a joke. Let’s say my brother dies peeing on an electric fence, just because he died doing something stupid doesn’t make it a joke to me. That’s why I will never understand how people could think that the Darwin Awards and similar things are worth their time.
Also…
I used to think Rotten.Com and Ogrish.Com were cool to until I thought about the fact that I knew someone that died in a car accident and asked myself if I’d want to see them laying dead on the highway. I just don’t see what’s funny about death so I would be real upset if someone close to me died and some idiots nominated them for a Darwin Award.
I want my funeral to be absurd, if that counts. I want them to stuff my body, and put hydraulics in through my arm, so I’m propped up in the coffin with my hand waving back and forth to everybody, with a gigantic smile wired in.
I just don’t want to die one of those deaths where everybody says, “He never even saw it coming.” Cause there I would be, up in heaven (or perhaps elsewhere), and people would ask me, “So. How’d you die?” And I have to say, “I don’t right know, man. I never even saw it coming.” I mean, I would feel so stupid!
As to the drunk man decapitation, the first police on the scene had this short conversation: “Hey. What’s that in the road, A head?” They had to put up a new street sign: “Stop - a head”
There was an episode of Northern Exposure where Maggie’s fiancée is killed by a falling satellite. It sort of fused itself into his body. The mis-shaped coffin was a hoot.
My mom had a boyfriend (my parents were divorced). After they went their separate ways, he eventually died and my mom went to his funeral. She never knew he had an identical twin brother, and when he walked in…
I think it would be worse if the circumstances of the death were somehow “amusing”. The grief would probably be the same in terms of the death per se, but it would be more difficult to talk about it with other people. I mean, it’s bad enough telling people your father just died. It must be much worse if you know that explaining the circumstances of the death would make the whole thing sound ridiculous, and that people might not even believe you.
My three-year-old cousin was reaching into a barrel to get some toys and fell in, headfirst. There was rainwater in the bottom of the barrel. He drowned in a few inches of water.
It has struck me that this might be considered a rather comical way to die, but I would not be amused by jokes about it.
As to whether it’s better or worse to have someone you love die that way, I would say worse. Because it was so damn avoidable, and it’s made me paranoid to the point that if I ever have kids I will be afraid to let them out of my sight.
I think we sometimes confuse the tragicly absurd with comical. There’s nothing funny about some deaths, just very very odd. Like that guy that drowned in the storm sewer in 6 inches of water. Could you imagine what was going on his mind during those last fleeting moments of life?
However, now that I’ve preached that side of the story, anyone remember the Mary Tyler Moore Show? You know what ep I’m thinking of. That showed the other valid side of the issue, imho.
Yeah, I’ll never be running for any office.
