Humour and Death

Humour and Death? Really?


I've reading through an old 'Writer's Magazine' today (Issue February 2016) and found a few writing exercises on 'humour. One of the exercises suggests thinking of a certain topic (it lists: love, pets, parenting, death, illness, middle age). Then, write down a list of things you associate with this topic, and think of people who could illustrate those points. Then, put into an amusing short anecdote.


Now, before I even started on this, one thought struck me straight away. Death? Can there ever be an amusing / humorous story about death. Can death every be amusing? I can think straight away of ways that death can be good (a relief from a a long illness maybe). Or, thinking of a crime story here, a kidnap victim would be very happy when if the captor dies. But of course feeling relief and / or happiness does not mean it is funny. 

So we are left with dark comedy and morbid humour. As we know, this can easily offend, and certainly is not for everyone. So I am getting into dangerous writing territory already. A fine line to cross into the offensive. We do not joke about dead people and people dying, about funerals. Is it respect? Is it because most of us have experienced the death of a loved and simply found it so harrowing that there is certainly no humour to be found. Or maybe also because death and funerals is still something we don't really want to talk about - generally, whether humorous or not. 

It's a challenge and I'll try to come up with a story now.