I recently hit and surpassed a time limit the professionals had all agreed was accurate.
I.e. I should’ve been dead by now.
I find comfort and laughter in being able to joke about my condition. My daughter and I make jokes all the time about my early curtain. But it seems everyone else is very uncomfortable with it and they want to treat me as some frail old man and constantly tell me " in your condition you shouldn’t do that " I’m closing in on 8 months sober, the last 3 months actually began working a 12 step program because I decided to live. Is it selfish of me to blow off the people who are offended by my darker off color jokes about my mortality ? I’m living sober for the 1st time in decades and my illness is my fault its caused by my partying and general fuckery towards regular life. I’m sober and I’m happy and my daughter is happy. So does anything or anyone else really matter ?
People can be strange about death. Most people are afraid of it, or think of it in very sobering ways. For some it can be in the realm of the sacred. And then there are some who aren’t afraid, see it as a cause to celebrate, or who have what can be said to be a sacrilegious attitude about death. While I think it’s good to be aware of the feelings of people you may be talking to directly, in the end you’re the one getting ready to pass on. The way I see it is that if someone is so offended by your approach to death, they don’t have to listen to what you have to say. They can choose not to associate with you. But you may decide that it’s worth it to you to tone down your humor for certain people. I personally don’t see it as selfish. You have your own approach to handling your situation. But if you are really concerned about offending some people you genuinely care about, it couldn’t hurt to have a conversation with them about it to see how you can find a happy medium.
But this is coming from someone with a morbid sense of humor about death, and who sees death as the end of a brief experience in something much bigger. Not as the end of everything.
Someone is always going to have an opinion on what you’re doing or what you’re saying, but as long as you’re not doing things that are actually harming other people, then you do you man. Everyone handles approaching their own death differently. Besides, one could argue that it is offensive for someone else to expect you to have the same approach to death as them. Offense is a subjective thing.
With all that said, I think it’s awesome that you’ve gotten sober and that you and your daughter are happy. What a great way to wrap up your life. I’m guessing your daughter will cherish these memories after your gone and the humor you’re employing now might give her something to smile at when she misses you in the future.
I think you decide that best yourself. If it’s fitting for you and your daughter and is a good way to handle the situation I see no problem with it.
If your sense of humor offends other people regarding your own situation it’s them who have a problem with that not you. But I would advice you to make sure you can talk about it in a serious way to, because that might be. important.
We all have different views of death and different ways to handle death, but in my opinion the most common mistake we do in our society is that we don’t talk about it.
When my grandfather passed away very long time ago, my grandmother was hysterical because they never talked about death
(He had an unexpected heart attack, and it was a sudden death) she said she tried to talk about it many times, just to make sure that they got for example the funeral they wanted, or the tombstone. But my grandfather didn’t want to get close to the subject, stating that they would live for a very long time.
He got a beautiful funeral, but for 20 years my grandmother lived with the feeling that it might not have been done “The right way”
No matter how much we tried to assure her.
After that she was very neat talking about the fact that we’re all going to die, and when she passed away in cancer last summer she had everything planned into the smallest detail. She had even picked her own death notice for the newspaper. Unfortunately that didn’t stop my aunt from changing a lot of it into they way she wanted it, to handle her own mourning. And it eventually left half of the family hating eachother.
So in my opinion, yes you can joke around and it shouldn’t bother other people, just make sure you don’t miss the important serious things about it too.
I wish you and your daughter the very best of luck.
I personally find it a great approach about death.
My stepdad has a huge list of illnesses at least one of them is terminal. We don’t have a sad vibe in the house though. We joke a lot, even about some of his illnesses. If you make it to heavy, it isn’t good for mental health. What is the use of being sad while you slowly deteriorate if you can also make everything out of life