This past week, I interviewed widower and viral dark humor content creator Alex Tresner live on tiktok about how he’s been using the platform to make jokes about losing his wife to cancer and educating others on modern grieving.
You can check out all of Alex’s content on tiktok by following him at @Alexandergrey327
But first, an update on Death is Hilarious
To get in touch, email deathishilarious@gmail.com. You can support the podcast by subscribing, becoming a patron at patreon.com/deathishilarious, or by simply sharing the show with your friends and on social media.
Today my guest is K. Krombie, author of “Death in New York” which details the history and culture of burials, undertakers, and execution.
To get in touch, email deathishilarious@gmail.com. You can support the podcast by subscribing, becoming a patron at patreon.com/deathishilarious, or by simply sharing the show with your friends and on social media.
Today my guest is Autumn Toelle-Jackson, the award winning author of Boldly into the Darkness: Living with Loss, Growing with Grief & Holding onto Happiness. She’s also the founder of Growing with Grief, a website that provides those who are grieving with a place to find community, resources, and help.
To get in touch, email deathishilarious@gmail.com. You can support the podcast by subscribing, becoming a patron at patreon.com/deathishilarious, or by simply sharing the show with your friends and on social media.
Today my guest is Bethany Harvey, author of Dipped in It, a book where she explores the unpredictable spiral of grief after unexpectedly losing her father and openly shares the heartbreaking, gritty and unexpectedly hilarious insights that surface.
In this episode:
How intending to write daily gratitude posts turned into being vulnerable, honest, and funny as opposed to relentlessly positive
Grief is not just being sad, we weave in and out of so many emotions
How humor is a part of grief and how often those who haven’t experienced loss can’t quite wrap their heads around that (it has to do with absurdity and relief)
Why we feel drawn to share on social media
Feeling guilty about not being anything but positive and grateful
Thinking about Coolio during the funeral
To get in touch, email deathishilarious@gmail.com. You can support the podcast by subscribing, becoming a patron at patreon.com/deathishilarious, or by simply sharing the show with your friends and on social media.
Today my guest is Jennifer Lee Weaver, a Los Angeles based comic actress, producer, public speaker, and widow. After beating cancer, Jennifer’s mother passed away at the end of 2017 and then her wife passed away from cancer. She’s what I affectionately refer to as a “gold star widow.”
In this episode:
How absurd grief and loss is, especially when so many losses hit you in a short amount of time
Jennifer didn’t lean into comedy right away but has recently given herself permission to use humor to cope
Not being able to relate to the idea of what widowhood is supposed to look like
Being a multi-layered human, including when grieving
Missing the stupid stuff like fighting with your spouse
When people think grieving folks are “handling everything with grace”
Assigning yourself meaning and purpose in a life that’s chaos
All relationships end in tragedy- and still choosing to love despite that
Not having just one person/soulmate/great love
Atoms, string theory, multiple realities, and matter changing form
Feeling like a badass
To get in touch, email deathishilarious@gmail.com. You can support the podcast by subscribing, becoming a patron at patreon.com/deathishilarious, or by simply sharing the show with your friends and on social media.
Today my guest is Jenn Koiter- a storyteller with a background in education, nonprofit work, and technology who has taught at colleges and universities. Jenn is also the author of So Much of Everything, a book of poetry she created in order to process her complicated feelings of loss and grief that she experienced after her ex-boyfriend died from suicide.
In this episode:
Jenn uses her dead ex-boyfriend’s yoga mat
How grieving compares to dog obedience training
Needing to be ok with people not understanding the humor around death
Why people don’t understand using humor to cope with death and grief
The complicated feelings around someone dying of suicide after breaking up with them
How using humor to cope is often initially a part of someone’s personality and it’s magnified during trauma
Having a religious funeral for someone who was an atheist
How humor brings us together as mourners and connects us as a part of our grief
To get in touch, email deathishilarious@gmail.com. You can support the podcast by subscribing, becoming a patron at patreon.com/deathishilarious, or by simply sharing the show with your friends and on social media.
Today my guest is Nadine Menashe, the creator behind the Varsity Grief Squad, one of my favorite accounts on Instagram and also where Nadine makes memes and merch about her dead mom.
In this episode:
Nadine’s mom Svetlana was diagnosed with stage 4 breast, bone, and lung cancer in September 2019. That’s when the grief process started. When she passed away in October 2020, the humor came naturally. It was the only way she was able to communicate what she was feeling
Processing grief and loss with funny memes
Humor wasn’t always something Nadine used to cope with the hard stuff in life
The moment that Nadine started really leaning into humor was at her mom’s funeral
A lot of rabbis seem to have a great sense of humor around death
The backlash that comes with using dark humor to cope
Appreciating the view of death in Judaism
Meeting a grieving person where they are
To get in touch, email deathishilarious@gmail.com.
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Today my guest is Kathy Benjamin, author of the upcoming book, “It’s Your Funeral,” which aims to help demystify death, decrease your anxiety, and put the fun back in funeral. Every stage of the legacy planning process is considered, from a burial outfit to a funeral theme. Kathy’s writing has has received more than 100 million hits across some of the most popular humor and trivia websites in the world, including Mental Floss, Cracked, Grunge, The Smoking Jacket, and Uproxx. Kathy is also the author of Funerals to Die For.
In this episode:
What how panic attacks led Kathy to start writing comically about death
Using humor and learning everything about death gave her the ability to demystify dying
Why death positivity eases anxiety around the topic and gives you more control
Why we’re avoidant when it comes to death and dying
Getting kids comfortable with death and seeing bodies
How Victorians screwed us up when it comes to our relationship with death
The many different ways we grieve and mourn our loved ones
For more information about Death Is Hilarious, visit deathishilarious.com To get in touch, email deathishilarious@gmail.com. You can support the podcast by subscribing, becoming a patron at patreon.com/deathishilarious, or by simply sharing the show with your friends and on social media.
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Today my guest is Mitzi Weiland, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and creator of the podcast Dead Funny Dead Serious.
In this episode:
Mitzi was a bartender and artist before her mother was diagnosed with terminal stage 4 cancer (her father and grandfather also passed away when she was 7). Then she started looking into volunteering at hospices and senior centers (bingo is ruthless) and started to school to be a geriatric mental health specialist.
She then took a grief class and learned why she uses humor to deal with her grief (it was very eye opening).
Mitzi was raised by a grieving mother and it was never addressed. She was using humor to deflect.
Humor is absolutely a healthy coping mechanism- if it’s ONE of your tools.
Every tool should be used in moderation. Netflix is great until you start watching it for 24 hours a day and stop going to work. Wine is a great tool until it’s not.
Using humor to deflect vs to cope is a fine and personal line
Going to local comedy clubs and listening to comedians using the platform to process and cope with loss.
Why we have so much death anxiety in American culture (we’re living longer so palliative and deathcare is actually a new concept)
The new movement surrounding death positivity and how that’s not the space grieving people are in
Grievers are shunned for sharing their feelings
We hashtag and label everything so we put everything and everyone in a box. You can be happy, grieving, and angry all at the same time
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Today my guest is Leslie Gray Streeter, pop culture columnist, journalist, and author of Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like “Journey” in the Title
We talked about:
Leslie’s book Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like “Journey” in the Title
Making jokes about having to deal with the absurdities that come with your husband dying on your watch
The performative “sad-face-head-tilt-sigh” some people give widows
How some widows were able to take on 2020 in a very prepared way- isolation and having to do stuff we don’t want to do? Oh we got this. We go with the flow and have a sense of humor about it.
Why we feel kind of smug as widows
Do we have gallows humor or a desperate coping mechanism?
Patton Oswalt’s bit about the Polish Woman of Doom (he’s a widower!)
What has happened to us is absurd and absurdism is the foundation of comedy
How widowers are often portrayed as hot and widows are portrayed as hags in media and other double standards (this is seen on the show The Bachelor)
How widows are often accused of killing their husbands
Being an authentic sarcastic and messy widow who eats french fries out of her purse.
People who are defensive of our husbands… who didn’t know them
The pushback we receive when we don’t react how people want us to react
Sex and dating after being widowed
People project their own fears of being forgotten onto widows who find love again
How having deep relationships with our husbands primes us for wanting a deep connection again. Just because we want to love again passionately doesn’t mean we don’t love our husbands.
Our husbands told us they wanted us to find love again if they passed away before we did
