Death is funny. Death is really really funny.

...it just isn't fun. That statement has gotten me in a lot of trouble before. Claiming death is funny. People always give me odd looks or shake their heads. Yet the same people often laugh when a death fueled joke hits them just right. Indiana Jones shoots a man dead - often hailed as one of the best gags of all time. No, we're not morbid monstrous demons. It's about surprise and expectation. The laughter comes from the set up of the situation and how what happens isn't what we think will happen. Something that surprises a person evokes an emotional reaction. Fear is common if we feel threatened; laughter is common if we feel relived. Nothing is more surprising than death. Even the slow hand of disease. It feels wrong. I've lost a lot of loved ones in my life. I've stood by my share of hospital beds and I've gotten my share of phone calls at odd times. I go through a pretty predictable pattern. First I am cold and numb inside. I do not really want to deal with how sad everyone is and how upset they are at me for not being sad. I don't want to go to a funeral and talk to everyone about how sad they are. I don't want to stand up in front of a bunch of people and tell them how sad I am. I am often required to do these things anyways. It makes me very unlikely to care much about any will or other such things if I am involved in one. I don't want clocks or coin collections, I want the person back. Still, thanks to how overly emotional everyone is I tend to question if I'm a sociopath at this point. Generally a good deal after all of that hoopla is done I will be sad. That is my second stage. I don't sit around crying. Which once again can offend people as I tend to cry at everything. Music. Movies. Really good comic panels. A dog with a hurt leg. The future death of people. It is a different kind of pain, though. I am sad someone is gone. Not being emotionally moved by art or the fictional story I'm creating in my brain about when they might be gone. It just hurts that I can never see them again. I think about them a lot in this period. Especially animals I've known. For some reason I dwell a lot on how I could never truly communicate to them how I cared. After that, stage three of my own personal pain cycle is getting over it. I'm less sad after awhile. After that I'm even less sad. I think about the dead less and less. Even if I told myself I wouldn't forget them. I start to. They fade. They're no longer part of my life. I consider doing things like visiting graves or setting up a ritual to keep thinking about them. I always decide at the end that would just be an unnecessary step. Generally later, much later, after I haven't thought about them for weeks, a year, longer, comes the dreams. My fourth stage or step or whatever you want to call it. Vivid complicated dreams about those I've lost. Long detailed conversations with them over coffee. Or in their workshop. Oddly eloquent and creepy predictions about my future from passed friends and family. The kind of dreams that make people believe in ghosts. I don't, though. I don't believe in ghosts.