Death, stress and the Dark Arts

Noo, I'm not talking about Satanic worship. There will be no pentagrams or blood ceremony in this article. I'll save that for October's entries.

I am talking about coping mechanisms and the art of dealing with the ever looming specter of death with dark humour☠️

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If you are too uptight to enjoy a good joke about your own mortality; than I'm afraid we can't be friends.

Picture it: Newmarket, Ontario. It's March 2018. I'm strapped to the operating table, looking like Jesus on the cross- both arms outwardly anchored to platforms jutting off the main operating table to form a crude crucifix. I'm nervous. My eyes are so teary everything has taken on a watery sheen.

As I feel the sedation begin to pull me under I look at my cardiologist and slurr:

"Doc, if I don't make it, do me a favour? Take my heart out and yell "Kali Ma!!," like in the scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."

My last consious sounds I remember hearing were her chuckles.

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When life is at it's most scary or trying to tear my heart out through it's saddest tragedy, I fight back using the only weapon I know how to weild: inappropriate humour.

I did it when my dad was dying in 2015 of cancer, when one of my best friends suddenly died last fall, and even when I lost a baby in a late term miscarriage.

I get my share of scoldings.

Old ladies feigning shock, shrieking an indignant, "Angela!"

Guess what? None of that changes me. I am who I am.

I laugh inappropriately. At funerals. In hospitals.

Maybe it's the Native in me. As a people we employ humour in all aspects of our lives.

Indigenous artists, activists and leaders have used dark humour as a way to subversively challenge the colonialist status quo for decades.

Humour provides a safe place; or in the case of dark humour, a not-so-safe place, to seek comfort and to self-sooth in times of distress. Humour is also a valuable communication tool; sometimes an unpalatable truth tastes better when it's laced with a joke. And sometimes you dark, creepy jokes just scare your audience into backing down. Either way, it's a win.

When it comes to my CKD I make jokes to let others know it's ok to still find joy in life, even when it's ending. I make jokes to mask the terror I feel when another integral cog in body's clock breaks down. And I make jokes simply because it's something you aren't supposed to joke about.