Recovering Life #7 Laughing in the dark

If you didn’t laugh you’d cry.  It was January 2021 and it was meant to be an overnight stay in hospital, followed by a straightforward test that would be the gateway to getting on with my life.  It turned out somewhat differently.  

I’d been prolonged over the weekend, as my test was delayed and then an abnormality was discovered- which had been hidden before now.  The cause of my bleed had been detected and a few days later I was preparing for surgery.  

All of this was in the midst of Ireland’s third wave of Covid when we were topping the world’s charts for all the wrong reasons.  The meaningful Christmas we had been promised- and some had enjoyed- and the UK variant had got together to ruin our party.  Covid cases were on our ward and on the minds of the staff- many of whom had suffered and were returning to work themselves.  

It was no laughing matter, yet comedy prevailed.  The good humour of staff and patients together in the ward gave courage and brightened the bleakest of Januarys.  I’ll save the blushes of the main actors by saving the details, but to give a flavour I’ll use nicknames I’ve assigned.  Within our 6 bed bay we had the lady, the gentleman, the broadcaster, the pastor / pharmacist, the barman, the hippie!  In itself this may sound like the start to a bad joke, but it actually provided the most unlikely comedy club giving us hope in the twists and turns of our journey through the shadow of sickness.  In this there was laughter at professional levels of snoring, stealing one another’s food and staff nurse’s names being comically mispronounced.  All this was done in with the dark and dry Dublin humour that beautifully levels everyone and yet lifts them at the same time.  

This time was brought to a close as my surgery was postponed due to rising cases of Covid in the hospital making it too risky.  So, I was cleared for discharge home just at the same time as a desperately needed package of clothes had arrived.  Comedic timing! 

For those famliar with the stress and stark suffering encountered in the shadow of death in hospital settings this will be no surprise.  Humour is a vital weapon in the war to brighten the darkness and bring much needed hope.  

For those unfamiliar to this check out the writings of Adam Kay- the doctor who handed over his stethoscope to become a comedian- and you’ll see why such a career change is not as strange a move as it seems.  

As Covid’s cloud moved into our world viewing figures of Netflix show we turned to humour.  Especially as the days darkened with the arrival of Covid in March and April 2020, but also in October 2020.  Maybe it was the longer evenings or even the onset of Halloween with it’s dark themes that brought this about? The season which for many attempts to dress up and laugh at the darkest of our moments for some seemed out of place.  Maybe it was too close to the bone? 

The need to laugh in the face of disease, disaster and even death is nothing new, says Lucy Rayfield from University of Bristol.  She takes us to gladiators in ancient Rome and to funny stories penned in the midst of a mores sever pandemic- the Black Death in 1348. Rayfield suggests humour helps us in very practical ways as, “It is difficult to feel scared and to be amused at the same time.”  Can amusing ourselves help us find our brave? We can ease our worries and fears by laughing at them.  It brings us to the present, brightening and lightening our pathway through the dark.   

Could humour also serve as a welcome distraction? It helps us avoid having to go to that dark place.  It seems to offer a path that avoids our suffering.  

In our modern Western world we have managed to avoid suffering and death remarkably well by the wonders of medicine.  We keep death closed away in hospitals.  Confined, by and large, to the distant land of old age, as life expectancies increase.  The reality is that it is more present than we recognise or care to admit even in the most normal of times.  The pandemic had brought death to our doorstep.  It isn’t so easily avoided.  

Unless, of course, we are so engrossed in our Netflix comedy that we don’t hear the knocking at the door? Could it be that trends shown in lockdowns are only developing threads sewn beforehand- escaping our difficulties and even death itself on our screens? Are we Amusing Ourselves to Death? Neil Postman suggested this of the medium of TV in 1985 and it is even more true today in the world of the internet.  “People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” We seek entertainment to escape living in the shadow of death.  

There are of course those who look to brighten death’s darkness by finding hope in religion.  Whilst it may bring some comfort, if even those who have faith suffer we might question what help it really brings.  Surviving Covid- a channel 4 documentary- showed Pastor Tobi whose strong faith didn’t shield him from suffering several strokes, failed kidneys and led to him being discharged home with severe mental and physical disabilities.  He was dealt a blow so heavy he can hardly speak or lift his head.  It seems God had left him in the dark.  

In his suffering, even though trusting in God, Tobi resembles another who suffered darkness and even death on the cross.  Mark’s account of Jesus life focuses on his death and has been described as a story of Jesus’ passion with an extended introduction.  He emphasises Jesus’ death.  His style is stark and straight and so he presents Jesus death as his darkest day, as he details the suffering of the cross.  In the middle of this day nature hid it’s light, as if in shame, at this the ultimate travesty of justice as the innocent One suffered.  Yet this is no ordinary suffering or death, so in this daylight darkness there is hope.  

Whilst certainly being no laughing matter, Mark has layers of irony as he communicates the crucifixion.  The mocking soldiers who crown someone as King, but who looks anything but.  The title above the cross claiming He is the King of the Jews.  The irony being that in his suffering the King- promised by God to come to the rescue- has the unlikeliest of coronations.  He was a King who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.  So it was through the darkness of death he brought the light of life.  

This light dawns as some women of faith go the tomb early in the morning to discover Jesus has risen from the dead.  Such news will spread in a way that brings a hope filled faith to many, but is initally greeted in the strangest, yet most honest of ways.  The women are trembling and bewildered.  They flee from the scene and say nothing to anyone because they are afraid.  Eventually the news will break, but for now they are awestruck.  Some of the earliest manuscripts of Mark’s gospel end here.  Awkward, abrupt, astonished.  Here was the disorientating and definite turning point not just in their lives, but in the story of the world.  

Such resurretion hope would, in time, make sense and settled into the early Christian worldview, aided by encounter with the risen Jesus, before His ascension.  

Here today is the hope that truly brightens our darkest days.  If God can work through the darkest of days and the death of His Son to bring the light of life what does that mean for our darkest days? It is just like him to be at work in our darkest moments and difficulties and even at death’s door to bring His hope.  

In my initial days following the bleed on my brain it was this hope that held me safe and secure.  It was the closest I had come to death’s door and there was always the possibility of recurrence.  When medically nothing seemed certain, this secure hope lifted me.  

Six months later, following the discovery of the abnormal tangle of vessels that caused the bleed and considering the risks of surgery ahead I felt the shadow of death more heavily than initially.  Fear was closer at hand and yet it was in such shadowy moments I knew God more closely.   

I had learned we need not avoid or fear the shadow of death, disaster or disease.  

In our search for ways to lighten or brighten our difficulties we find an invitation to discover God’s sense of irony- it is through darkness and death he brings light and life.  

Here is the truth that means we can laugh in the dark.