Thank-you for these words. I feel less foolish about wearing heels that sank and stuck and sank and stuck in the wet sod while carrying my mother’s casket as one of the pall-bearers. I just finished writing about it in an essay called “What I Wore to Your Funeral”. It ends: “I’ve never liked the saying: Comedy is tragedy plus time. But that’s because I never understood the fullness of the human comedy, until now. I was a bit-player in a bigger drama. There is nothing funny about death. But humour, especially when it shows up, uninvited and unexpected, dressed like a clown on stilts trying to out-race a storm, is a reflection of the all-too-human need to cheat death. It is, therefore, life-saving, life-giving. It’s humbling. Humour, humbling, human - all words derived from humus - the mud and dust from which we came, to which we shall return, the holy ground, the primordial ooze, the dried dirt on the bottom of those dam shoes.” - Madonna Hamel, author of weekly column "Pop89"
Keep them coming, I need all the help keeping sane in the next 4 years. Thank you!
Thanks. I've been avoiding all news and commentary for the last few weeks. Good toe tip into cold reality.
So appreciated the Buechner quotes.
Ha! Glad I'm not the only one! My husband and I greatly appreciate your wisdom. Thank you.
Thank-you for these words. I feel less foolish about wearing heels that sank and stuck and sank and stuck in the wet sod while carrying my mother’s casket as one of the pall-bearers.
I just finished writing about it in an essay called “What I Wore to Your Funeral”. It ends: “I’ve never liked the saying: Comedy is tragedy plus time. But that’s because I never understood the fullness of the human comedy, until now. I was a bit-player in a bigger drama. There is nothing funny about death. But humour, especially when it shows up, uninvited and unexpected, dressed like a clown on stilts trying to out-race a storm, is a reflection of the all-too-human need to cheat death. It is, therefore, life-saving, life-giving. It’s humbling. Humour, humbling, human - all words derived from humus - the mud and dust from which we came, to which we shall return, the holy ground, the primordial ooze, the dried dirt on the bottom of those dam shoes.” - Madonna Hamel, author of weekly column "Pop89"