Catharsis

Warning:  It's late.  I'm tired.  Can't sleep.  So what you get is lots of rambling!  Huzzah!

Say it with me friends.  "Catharsis."  

Now take a deep breath in.  Now exhale.

According to Dictionary.com, the word "Catharsis" means: 

1.  the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.

2.  Medicine/Medical . purgation.

3.  Psychiatry .

a.  psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of pent-up, socially unacceptable affects.

b.  discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.

 

I come from a rather large family.  Not the "I have 19 brothers and sisters!" kind of  family, but a large extended family.  I have cousins I see once a week and I have cousins I see once every 10 years.  The nice thing about being in my large, loving extended family is knowing that even though we only see each other once in a while we still welcome each other into our lives.

My great-great-uncle passed away on March 4th while vacationing in Florida.  He was only 75-years old.  I say only because my great-grandmother, his older sister by 18 years was 89 when she passed away in 2007.  Thanks to this 18-year age gap my uncle grew up like a brother to my grandmother.  His children grew up with my mother and uncle.

I loved my great-great-uncle as much as I love the rest of my family.  When we were little he would pick UncleBrother and me up to take us swimming at his house.  Then he'd take us to McDonald's for lunch in his little red hatchback.  I remember the pool, the house, and his dog Cubby like I was just there yesterday.  Even the grandfather clock one of his boys made that sat in the foyer.

I volunteered to be a reader at his funeral on Saturday.  While he and his first wife had four children and three grandchildren, I am willing to step up to the plate to take some of the sadness off of their shoulders.  I know how hard it is to deal with the hundreds of people coming to pay their respects as well as trying to stay positive for the rest of your family.  My aunt and I were literally thrown into being readers at my  great-grandmother's funeral (my cousin was asked but while she's an awesome RN she'd much rather listen to me read.  She said she'll have no problem doing CPR in front of a thousand people, but reading?  Not so much.)  My aunt and I rocked it that day.

So this evening, after my mother took me to the United Methodist Women's Salad Supper, I decided to go over the reading chosen for me.

Oh, one thing I failed to mention - my family has a not-so-normal way of dealing with grief.

We laugh.  We laugh, we joke, we smile.

We try to make light of a dark situation.

This is our catharsis.

Yes, I know others do too, but most of the time we get the looks of complete disgust.  For instance, when my father was diagnosed with colon cancer in June of 1998 we dealt with it.  Of course we worried, but after many discussions with the doctor and the assurance that yes, the cancer was treatable, but it ran the risk of him having a permanent ostomy put into place at age 42.  When he was wheeled out of surgery we learned that the tumor had been removed, but yes, he had an ostomy. 

We then did what we do best.  We laughed.

It started off, not surprisingly, with my father himself.  Not being allowed to eat or drink anything until his intestines started working again he was allowed to only wipe the inside of his mouth with a damp sponge-on-a-stick.  To which he exclaimed in his hoarse-from-the-breathing-tube voice "Damn.  This is absolutely delicious."

The jokes and jabs kept coming.  A friend brought Jim Beam in decorative decanters.  People brought plants and flowers.  My grandmother found him a monkey with bendable appendages and promptly stuck its thumb in its nose.  I drew  "One Way" and "No Entry/No Exit" signs for his room.  

People were apalled.

Things like this happen all of the time.  When Bubba was born and had to spend his first three weeks of life in the NICU we made jokes.  Jokes about how my dad decided to call him Bubba, based totally on the fact that he was a 3lb 14oz Caucasian Male, not a 350lb African American linebacker.  Or captain of a shrimp boat.  Or on death row.

 

We laughed.  Some of the nurses didn't.

Tonight while going over the chosen reading for Saturday's funeral my Spidey-senses kicked in.  We were mourning the loss of a great man, but this great man also had that wonderful sense of humor that runs throughout our entire family.

Jesus wore a lamp shade.  God only moons at night.  I even get to say "smite" in a sentence and not have it be because I'm quoting Monty Python.

Mother laughed.  I laughed.  Gramma giggled.

And I know a great man, his older sister and her husband are looking down, watching, sharing a drink and laughing.  All three of them proud of the families they've created.