The Amateur's Guide To Death & Dying
Enhancing Life Near Death
Humor takes the sting away; it humanizes us; it helps us keep our perspective. Humor enriches us; it educates us; it brings us joy. Humor doesn’t dissolve the pain or make our life any less poignant, but it does help make things more bearable. That’s my philosophy, and I’m happy to share it with you on a weekly basis. I hope that if you enjoy what you see, you will take the opportunity to share it with others.
[E]leven days after laying his son to rest, Frank J. Kerrigan got a call from a friend.
“Your son is alive,” he said.
“Bill (Shinker) put my son on the phone,” Kerrigan said. “He said ‘Hi Dad.’ ”
Orange County coroner’s officials had misidentified the body, the Orange County Register reported Friday (http://bit.ly/2tZSyZj).
The mix-up began on May 6 when a man was found dead behind a Verizon store in Fountain Valley.
Kerrigan, 82, of Wildomar, said he called the coroner’s office and was told the body was that of his son, Frank M. Kerrigan, 57, who is mentally ill and had been living on the street.
When he asked whether he should identify the body, a woman said — apparently incorrectly — that identification had been made through fingerprints.
“When somebody tells me my son is dead, when they have fingerprints, I believe them,” Kerrigan said. “If he wasn’t identified by fingerprints I would been there in heartbeat.”
Frank’s sister, 56-year-old Carole Meikle of Silverado, went to the spot where he died to leave a photo of him, a candle, flowers and rosary beads.
“It was a very difficult situation for me to stand at a pretty disturbing scene. There was blood and dirty blankets,” she said.
On May 12, the family held a $20,000 funeral that drew about 50 people from as far away as Las Vegas and Washington state. Frank’s brother, John Kerrigan, gave the eulogy.
“We thought we were burying our brother,” Meikle said. “Someone else had a beautiful sendoff. It’s horrific.”
The body was interred at a cemetery in Orange about 150 feet from where Kerrigan’s wife is buried.
Earlier, in the funeral home, the grieving Kerrigan had looked at the man in the casket and touched his hair, convinced he was looking at his son for the last time. “I didn’t know what my dead son was going to look like,” he said.
Then came the May 23 phone call from Shinker. Kerrigan’s son was standing on the patio.
It was unclear how coroner’s officials misidentified the body.
Doug Easton, an attorney hired by Kerrigan, said coroner’s officials apparently weren’t able to match the corpse’s fingerprints through a law enforcement database and instead identified Kerrigan by using an old driver’s license photo.
When the family told authorities he was alive, they tried the fingerprints again and on June 1 learned they matched someone else, Meikle said.
Easton said the coroner’s office provided the Kerrigan family with a name of that person, but the identification hasn’t been independently confirmed. The attorney said the family plans to sue, alleging authorities didn’t properly try to identify the body as Kerrigan’s son because he is homeless.
Sheriff’s Lt. Lane Lagaret, a spokesman for the coroner’s office, declined to comment to the Register because an investigation was underway.
The mistaken death identification led the federal government to stop disability payments for her brother, Meikle said. The family is working to restore them.
Meikle said her brother chose to return to living on the street and doesn’t understand how hard the mistake was on his family.
“We lived through our worst fear,” she said. “He was dead on the sidewalk. We buried him. Those feelings don’t go away.”
Complete Article HERE!
6. Shalewa Sharpe
I was pretty upset at the world after my mom died. One day at work, a customer complained about me not moving fast enough and I was ready to cuss him out, but my manager said, “Stay calm. Your mother would have wanted you to stay calm.” Um, how the hell did my manager know what my mother would have wanted? My mother once yelled at a stranger for chewing with his mouth open—at Thanksgiving dinner at a shelter. Pretty sure she would have wanted me to slap that customer upside the head and say, “Is that fast enough for you?”
Another NYC-based comedian, Shalewa Sharpe “developed her sly yet goofy style in Atlanta where she was raised,” according to her website. For more insightful, intimate observations, you should check out her album, Stay Eating Cookies.
7. Jenn Welch
“Ugh, it’s been three weeks since my dad died, how am I still single?!”
Jenn Welch was the subject of a recent Washington Post story headlined, “This comedian’s dad died last month. So she added that in her Tinder profile.” Yes, she really did that. In the article, Welch explains that her intent was not to make fun of those that responded: “The joke’s not on the men who respond to her, Welch said. Rather, she’s the punchline. ‘The joke of it is to be that brutally honest about where I am and what I’m going through,’ she said.”
Curious to see what kind of responses she got? We all are. She’s done us all a favor and made an Instagram account where she posts screenshots of her various exchanges. Here are two of my personal favorites:
Of Welch’s peculiar approach to grieving, the Post observed how social media helped her connect with other people in her shoes: “Welch did draw inspiration from social media—specifically from her friend and fellow comedian Ben Wasserman, whose father passed away from cancer two weeks before Welch’s did. “We’ve kind of been grieving together,” Welch said. “He went to town on Facebook with jokes about it… That made me feel more comfortable about being open about what I’m going through as well.”
8. Ben Wasserman
“how bout an all-female reboot of MY DAD”
The joke above is one example of the many statuses that Ben Wasserman has posted on Facebook since his father’s death. Welch wasn’t exaggerating when she said he “went to town”—I can attest to this, being that I am his Facebook friend. A few of his other memorable takes, reacting to Daylight Savings Time and Rachel Maddow’s tax return story, include “oh great first i lose my dad now i lose AN HOUR??” and “wake me up when Rachel Maddow gets a DAD return.”
9. Pete Davidson
SNL’s Pete Davidson has been open about his father’s death, on 9/11, throughout his career as a comic. The joke above is hardly about grief, but it was just too good not to include. You should really watch the video, his delivery is on point. Plus, he’s got a phenomenal follow-up joke that I don’t want to spoil for you.
10. Alison Zeidman
Alison Zeidman is currently a writer for TruTV’s Adam Ruins Everything. She wrote this gem of a joke about her dad, who passed away in 2014. Like others on this list, Zeidman took to social media to express herself at the time. And like Alyssa Limperis, she wrote a satirical article about the grief she was experiencing; A Father’s Day Sale for the Recently Deceased Dad. Both comics have appeared on Calogero’s podcast, which you can listen to right here.
Look for Part 1 HERE!
By Liz Magee
[R]ight up there with the rule of threes, “tragedy + time = comedy” is one of the most trite principles of joke-telling. Although there are exceptions—looking at you, Jeselnik—many comedians are careful when it comes to sensitive material pertaining to death and the grieving process. Comics constantly grapple with the question: How soon is too soon?
I’m from Orlando, Florida. For weeks after the Pulse shooting, a harmless question of “where are you from?” became a sensitive matter. When my response was “Orlando,” my questioners would usually take a moment or two to reassess where the conversation was headed. Some were curious if I knew anybody affected and would ask me outright. Some were quick to change the subject. A seemingly harmless question indirectly led the conversation towards the topic of death; naturally, people dealt with that in different ways.
As a comic myself, I wrote a joke about experiencing this awkward exchange that was happening pretty frequently: “I’m from Orlando. Yeah, it’s weird saying that right now. People are like ‘Where you from?’ And I’m like, ‘9/11.’”
As you can imagine, this joke was hit or miss. It’s hard to make death funny, but I understand why comics would gravitate towards that kind of material. There are those who simply love the challenge—looking at you again, Jeselnik—and then there are those who turn jokes into a sort of therapeutic process, a means of coping with their own grief. Here are ten comedians who are tackling the subject of death and who are, for lack of a better term, killing it.
1. Laurie Kilmartin
I think it’s fair to put Kilmartin at the top of this list, since her most recent special was literally titled 45 Jokes About My Dead Dad. In 2014, Kilmartin live-tweeted the painful experience of losing her dad to lung cancer which was the seed of inspiration for her special. 45 Jokes includes documentary footage of her and her family while her father was in hospice care, which give great and grave context to the hilarious 45 jokes that would follow. As Robert Ham observes in his review for Paste, “just as her tweets touched a nerve in the hearts of the people reading them, this hour could offer up the catharsis that someone needs during a tough, terrible time.”
2. Patton Oswalt
By the end of April, it will have been a year since Patton Oswalt lost his wife Michelle McNamara. Oswalt has been open about his grieving process, talking about it publicly on Twitter and on shows like Conan and The Late Show. In a recent interview with NPR, Oswalt explains that pop culture’s representation of grief is way off—hence the Batman comparison. When referring to superheros specifically, Oswalt elaborates:
…part of their motivation is based on losing someone that they love. Which then of course leads them to travel the world learning martial arts and doing CrossFit and getting really cut… And that’s not been my experience. When you lose someone, you tend to eat Wheat Thins for breakfast and rewatch The Princess Bride about 80 times and not sleep all that well.
The entire interview is eight minutes long—it’s really worth a listen.
3. Chris Calogero
Roughly two years ago, NYC based comedian Chris Calogero lost his roommate Amy Daulton, also a comedian. I distinctly remember telling that joke at a bar show only a month or so after her passing. I was struck not only by the fact that he was onstage so soon, but by how funny the joke was. I’ve remembered it ever since. Chris now hosts Mourning Coffee, a podcast where he interviews other comedians about their experiences with grief—how it affects their personal lives as well as their comedy.
4. Shane Torres
In his late night debut on Conan, Shane Torres continues to elaborate on these “hauntings” from his belated father. We’ll get to see more from Shane soon, since it was recently announced that he was one of fourteen comedians selected to record a Comedy Central Half Hour. In the meantime, though, here’s his set from Paste Studios.
5. Alyssa Limperis
“Hardest season to have a dead dad: holiday. Second hardest: tax”
Alyssa Limperis is a NYC-based comedian who has mounted several installments of her one-woman play No Bad Days, about her experience losing her father to brain cancer. Somehow, it’s packed with jokes. (I know because I’ve seen it firsthand.)
In addition to taking to the stage, Twitter and Facebook, Alyssa has written numerous blog posts that serve as a beautifully raw and insightful glimpse of her inner life throughout the grieving process. On Christmas Eve in 2015, her first Christmas without her father, she posted a “Christmas Newsletter”. She prefaces her entry by introducing what was apparently a tradition: “My dad used to write sarcastic Christmas newsletters to humorously highlight the not so great moments of our past year. Luckily for this exercise, 2015 was filled with many of those. In his honor, I wrote one for this year.”
It’s just as funny and sad as you’d expect it to be.
Complete Article HERE!
By George Harrison
[T]HESE are the shocking true stories of the unfortunate people who died whilst having sex.
The tragic stories highlight a dangerous side to everyone’s favourite pastime, so remember to take care next time you get your rocks off.
One man recently met a sticky end after being crushed by a mountain of pornographic magazines.
The Japanese man, named as 50-year-old Joji, was found six months after his six-tonne stash of porn magazines fell on him.
Cleaners tasked with tidying his neglected flat found that the entire apartment was rammed with the explicit magazines.
It is unknown whether the man, a former car-manufacturer, had died from a heart attack and then fell into a stack of pornography, or whether he was crushed to death by his X-rated collection.
In 2007 a couple from Columbia, South Carolina, fell to their deaths after plunging naked from the roof of an office building.
The bodies of Brent Tyler and Chelsea Tumbleston, both 21, were found by a taxi driver in the middle of an otherwise-empty street at 5am.
The couple’s clothes were later found on the roof of a nearby building, where they were believed to have been having a risky outdoor romp before falling from the roof.
A Russian man died in 2009 after completing a 12-hour orgy with female pals, who had bet him over £3,500 that he couldn’t keep going for half a day.
Minutes after completing the bet, mechanic Sergey Tuganov died of a heart attack, which had been caused by the huge quantity of Viagra he had guzzled to prepare him for the task.
In 2013, a Zimbabwean news website reported that a couple were attacked by a lion after having sex in the bush.
The big cat killed Sharai Mawera after interrupting the couple, although her unidentified lover managed to run away before he could be killed.
After notifying the police, the male lover, who escaped wearing only a condom, found the woman’s mauled body at the scene of the attack.
Donna Lange, 51, smothered her lover to death inside a mobile home.
The intoxicated woman, from Washington, claimed she didn’t know how the man died, although a witness claimed to have seen her crush his face with her chest.
A trainee doctor, Zheng Gang, died of a heart attack in 2011 – after over-exerting himself whilst producing a sample at a sperm bank.
The 23-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene of China’s Wuhan University, where he had spent two hours inside a booth, having already visited four times that week.
A cop died in 2009 when his heart gave out during a threesome – and his wife sued his doctor for not warning him against having sex.
William Martinez, a 31-year-old Atlanta police officer, died whilst having sex with another woman and a male friend.
But his wife won $3 million (£2.4 million) after suing his doctor for not warning him that he had a weak heart, and should avoid strenuous activities.
A sick neo-Nazi roleplaying session ended in tragedy, after 38-year-old Simon Burley died when a sex game with lover Elizabeth Hallam went wrong.
The hanging-enthusiast had a noose fitted around his neck whilst his lover played the part of a Nazi executioner, who hanged him as part of a sex game they were playing.
Unfortunately, the knife she planned to cut him down with was blunt, and the man was left to suffocate to death at his house in Grimsby.
Complete Article HERE!
