For starters i dont have a basement.
All i did was post a video and ask everyones opinion on it.
But do i find it odd ?
Yeah i do, the guy appears to be smiling and laughing one minute, then crying the next (in the full news clip version)
Ive seen grieving people, ive never seen anything like this, his kid has been shot to death.
And he's laughing ?
I dont get that, not one little bit
If you think laughing about your child having its brains blown out is "normal"
Perhaps its your grip on reality thats been lost here
Mike, I only just lost my father on the early morning hours of January 13th. In the horror and sorrow of getting THAT phone call at 2:30 in the morning, followed by hysterical crying, booking as a one-way the first available flight out of state, packing like an insane woman, a two-hour drive to Denver International Airport and a two-hour flight to Houston, coupled with the need to be strong for family and all of the funeral arrangements, there were times I found myself joking and laughing.
This doesn't negate true grief.
While in Houston, I stayed with my mother to keep her strong (even though my brother and his wife stayed at a plush hotel). I became the de facto person who made the funeral arrangements though nothing was legally in my name, struggling and failing to get a rabbi for the services. (Dad was Jewish though not actively practicing, being very secular while not even attending a Reform synagogue in at least 20 years). I had to get an interfaith minister I never heard of to do the services, even though he knew almost nothing about Judaism. I wrote the obituary which went on-line - and which the minister used as his eulogy probably because he just couldn't be bothered to use the information I gave him. I identified my father's body before the funeral as an identification is required prior to a cremation, causing me to nearly have a total melt down. This is mostly because I had never allowed myself time for grief as I was trying to be strong for my mother, though seeing him lying dead was almost more than I could bear. I was frustrated and saddened with problems by the funeral home - a back-logged crematory meant we had an empty urn for the funeral and it would be much later before Dad's ashes would be interred. Still, even after this, there were times I found myself joking and laughing, even giggling at certain times during the funeral.
This doesn't negate true grief.
I became seriously (though not contagiously) ill while staying in Houston, which meant I had to book a last-minute return flight home even though I had sworn to stay with my mother until Dad's ashes were interred (my brother had decided to only stay a week, which again means mother would have only had me). The next day, I discovered I had something called "chemical pneumonia" which occurred due to problems I encountered while in Houston. First thing this morning, I got a phone call from the doctor saying that the D-Dimer test, which tests for blood clots and possible pulmonary embolism, came back as a low positive. While inflammation can cause false positives, I needed to get into Denver for an immediate CT-scan, the results of which have not yet been released. I also learned that Dad's interment will finally be happening this Saturday at 3pm CST - just a few hours shy of being two full weeks since his death. So much for trying to keep any of this even remotely Jewish. While Dad was secular and I'm certainly secular, we still paid honor to certain traditions and culture. I'm the only one in my family who speaks any Hebrew and I'm the only one left who ever has attended Reform (secular) synagogue, so I had wanted to at least privately offer certain prayers out of respect to my Dad and his heritage. As I was ill and had to book an emergency flight back to Colorado from Houston, this did not occur. Even though I am heartbroken by my Dad's death, the many problems with the funeral and cremation, having to leave my mother in the middle of all of this, coming down with a serious illness and waiting to hear if I have a potentially fatal blood clot in or near my lungs, I've still found myself laughing and joking.
This doesn't negate true grief, serious illness, anxiety nor even fright.
I told a relative that I feel there is supposed to be an invisible contract between daddies and their daughters, which states that daddies will always be daddies even when daughters grow up. Even though I've written in the past that my dad was considerably (almost 58 years) older than I, I still thought this contract was in place. I knew that he had been in lousy health during the past several months yet this still felt entirely unexpected. Add into my misery that I had originally planned on going to Houston to visit Dad on January 11th but I decided to put off the travel for a month due to my work demands and because we all thought he was doing better. If I had traveled according to plan, I would have seen him one last time, hours before his death. In spite of all of this, there are times when I've laughed. Indeed, we've all laughed even when overwhelmed by grief. It isn't that we're mean or fickle but rather we're remembering happy times, or those things which would have made Dad laugh if he were still with us. There were also times we had no choice but to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I'm still alternating between, shock, acceptance and grief, coupled with happy memories and a small comfort that at least Dad is no longer suffering.
Human emotions are like that. We're complex creatures who are capable of feeling many contradictory feelings all at once. A grieving parent may recall a happy time with another grieving parent and laugh, yet still be overcome by the reality of loss.
