{"id":7207,"date":"2023-02-14T07:08:59","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T12:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=7207"},"modified":"2023-02-14T07:08:59","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T12:08:59","slug":"gallows-humor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2023\/02\/gallows-humor\/","title":{"rendered":"Gallows Humor"},"content":{"rendered":"

I live in a retirement community, and when somebody turns 90 here, we like to celebrate. A few months ago, a friend had a 90<\/span>th<\/span> birthday party that made me envious. I\u2019m just 88, but I announced that I too was going to have a 90<\/span>th<\/span> birthday party this year\u2014just in case I don\u2019t make it to 90. <\/span><\/p>\n

My friends found that funny. My adult children, not so much. <\/span><\/p>\n

Younger people need to understand that when you reach a certain age, sharing a kind of gallows humor can be a good thing\u2014at least in my experience. It allows me to touch on uncomfortable realities in ways that don\u2019t feel grim or scary. <\/span><\/p>\n

In my small circle of friends, gallows humor is also a form of bonding\u2014it reflects our mutual recognition that we\u2019re all in the same leaky boat. And whenever I open up a serious discussion of the things we kid about, they\u2019re OK with that. <\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the older people I know prefer to avoid subjects we make fun of. That\u2019s their way of coping, and I respect it. <\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t spend a lot of time thinking about my own death, but all the same, it\u2019s there at the back of my mind in mundane ways. When I come across references to the next presidential election, I wonder whether I\u2019ll still be alive to vote. I\u2019m not anxious about it, just wondering. Sometimes, reading the news and worrying about what will happen in the future to my children and grandchildren, I suspect I\u2019m lucky that I\u2019ll be out of here before long. <\/span><\/p>\n

I used to daydream about my own future, but these days I mostly take one day at a time\u2014and enjoy anything that comes my way that strikes me as funny.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like this remark by Woody Allen: \u201cI am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.\u201d And this one by novelist William Saroyan: \u201cEverybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Joking about my own demise, however, does seem to upset at least one of my adult children. And I realize that if my father, toward the end of his life, had made that crack about 90<\/span>th<\/span> birthdays, I\u2019d have found it painful to be reminded that he might not be around for much longer. <\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently, I\u2019ve promised myself not to rub my children\u2019s noses in it again, but aside from that, I\u2019m going to go on enjoying gallows humor.  <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I live in a retirement community, and when somebody turns 90 here, we like to celebrate. A few months ago, a friend had a 90th birthday party that made me envious. I\u2019m just 88, but I announced that I too…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Gallows Humor<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[79,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-voices-views"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7209,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207\/revisions\/7209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}