The Wit’s Guide to Funerals

Or, blasphemers on pogo sticks

P(l)easant Burial, Erik Werenskiold, 1883-85.

There ought to be laughter at a funeral. Not excessive amounts and not at all funerals, but some at most. Those closest to the departed are trying to hold it together, and a smile helps. Those furthest from the departed may wish they were even further, and a joke keeps them engaged. Even Miss Manners agrees: “Honest mourning is a matter for both laughter and tears; gloom unrelieved by laughter is suspicious.”

“What bereaved people need is little comic relief, and this is why funerals are so farcical.”
— George Bernard Shaw

As a strident vegetarian, Shaw requested that his funeral procession “be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small travelling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in honour of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures.” It seems his heirs thought this was a joke as the newsreels didn’t capture a single scarved fish.

“If you’ve ever wondered what the right thing is to say to someone who’s grieving a death, I think this is it: Tell me all about your dear one.”
— Duchess Goldblatt

The point of a funeral, Douglas Hofstadter writes, is to prolong the afterglow of a life. Everyone who knew the deceased comes together to “collectively rekindle in them all, for one last time, the special living flame that represents the essence of that beloved person, profiting directly or indirectly from the presence of one another, feeling the shared presence of that person in the brains that remain, and thus solidifying to the maximal extent possible those secondary personal gemmae that remain aflicker in all these different brains.” To make them remember, to really solidify those gemmae, make ’em laugh.

“Saying ‘I’m sorry’ is the same as saying ‘I apologize.’ Except at a funeral.”
— Demetri Martin

Can the quality of your life be measured by the quantity of mourners at your funeral? No, and who cares; you’re otherwise engaged on that particular date. Plus, there’s a handful of mean lines about packed funerals: “They wanted to make sure he was dead,” goes one; “Give the public what they want to see and they’ll come out for it,” says another. Similarly, the sentiment that “I’m not going to the funeral but I approve of it” has been around since hearses were pulled by horses.

“If anyone attending my funeral is not dressed in black, I shall haunt him through all his waking nights, dressed in South Sea Island shirt and Bermuda shorts and howling like a banshee.”
— Auberon Waugh

The all-time funniest eulogy (pronounced eugoogly) may have been John Cleese’s tribute to Graham Chapman, the Python who died of cancer at the age of 48. He began with a reference to the dead parrot sketch, as he had to. But then he explained how Chapman’s shock humour was his weapon in a lifelong battle against “mindless good taste,” thus requiring tributes in the form of “trousers dropping, blasphemers on pogo sticks, spectacular displays of high-speed farting, synchronized incest.” 

But the clincher came as Cleese explained why all this mattered:

“It gives others a momentary joy of liberation, as we realised in that instant that the social rules that constrict our lives so terribly are not actually very important.”

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ReccoMention 

For my paying subscribers (C$30/yr!) this week, an unusually timely tribute to the first Oscar winner born in this century:

Riposte Card 

For my founding subscribers ($C80/yr!) this month, an unusually timely tribute to a disconcertingly early spring:

(And yes, you’ll get physical postcard-sized art prints mailed to you if you pony up! Three blank ones in an envelope, a new one each month, amazing artists, a terrific deal!)

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Quote Vote

“I assisted, with several others of his friends, in escorting the body of Monsieur de Grammont to Soissons, from the siege of La Fere, where he was killed. I observed that, in all the places we passed through, the people we met with were moved to tears and lamentations by the mere solemn pomp of our convoy; for they did not know even the name of the departed.”
— Montaigne

Mindless good taste: It haunts us still. In which direction shall we take this solemn convoy next week?

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Here lies Issue No. 245 of Get Wit Quick, your weekly celebration of drawl bearers. Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies is the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral, as he memorably sang in One Week, and he explained why a couple years ago. The lesson: Never quote Skynyrd. Bury me with a copy of Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting so the worms will get their recommended daily allowance of fiber, and tap the ❤️ below to ensure this issue joins the bleedin’ choir invisible.