I did the eulogy and I did it as a bit, more or less,
my uncle would have wanted nothing less than full-on comedic address,
he was a man who laughed at everything including his own decline,
and he left instructions that the service should be entirely fine.
I opened with his worst joke, which he told at every gathering,
the one about the priest and the badminton and the blathering,
and the room erupted, half in sorrow and half in genuine release,
and my uncle would have said, that’s exactly it, that’s the peace.
Comedy at the funeral, the most honest use of laughter,
comedy at the funeral, every memory after,
comedy at the funeral, because what else do you say,
when the one who made you laugh the most has gone away.
The crying and the laughing at a funeral are cousins,
they live in the same house and they come out in their dozens,
when someone names the thing that everyone already feels,
and the laughter at the loss is part of how the loss heals.
My uncle left this world mid-laugh, apparently, the records say,
he was watching something on television one ordinary day,
and found something funnier than he could physically endure,
and the last thing he ever did was laugh himself unsure.