Dealing With Grief In My Own Way

In 1995 a good friend of ours died in a horrible car accident on the Tacoma Narrows bridge. It happened right before Christmas. That summer, my friend Sherry and I had scouted out a bed and breakfast here in our town in which to stay over Christmas. It was suppose to be something out of the ordinary, but when our friend was killed just a few days before, we had to make a decision whether or not to go ahead with our plans. We had put down a substantial amount to hold the rooms, and it didn’t seem right to leave the B & B owners in the lurch like that.

We were all in sort of a dazed state of disbelief yet, and so we were having a hard time being cheerful. Our hosts were aware of our grief, but we had told them we didn’t want that to affect their plans to serve us dinner in our rooms. The husband was dressed in a tuxedo and his wife had cooked a wonderful dinner for us.

Do you remember the Mary Tyler Moore episode where they are at a funeral and they all begin giggling? Well, something similar happened to me as our host brought our first course of soup and placed it before each of us on the table. It was a creamy vegetable soup served in individual small pumpkins. It looked and smelled delicious, and as I took the lid off mine, I was struck by a thought.

 I couldn’t help it. Out of my mouth came, “Ahhhh….chilled monkey brains!”. Our host looked at me like I had the worst manners, but the rest of us just giggled. I suppose I just needed to laugh. I wanted it to be like nothing had happened, but of course, it had. My timing could have been better, but our friends understood. We all had seen the Indiana Jones-Temple of Doom movie, including our friend who had been killed. He probably would have laughed too. In fact, I am sure he would have.