It's Okay to Laugh

Have you ever felt guilty for laughing while grieving? That moment when humor breaks through your sorrow, and you wonder if it's okay to smile? Nancy Weil, with over 18 years in grief support, joins us to explore why these moments aren't just okay—they're necessary for healing.

Nancy shares the science behind laughter's healing power during grief: it boosts our depleted immune systems, reduces stress hormones, and improves memory retention when we're struggling with "grief fog." But beyond the physiological benefits, laughter serves as a momentary respite, bringing us into the present when grief typically has us looking backward with regret or forward with fear. As Nancy explains, "When we laugh, we're here now and we get relief for a moment."

The conversation flows naturally into the importance of storytelling and creating rituals. Nancy encourages grievers to collect and share stories about their loved ones—not just the milestone moments, but the small, everyday details that truly capture who they were. These stories become treasured inheritances for future generations and help us process our grief by celebrating the fullness of our loved ones' lives. Similarly, personal rituals—whether visiting a gravesite, baking a favorite recipe, or simply raising a cup of coffee in remembrance—provide meaningful ways to honor our connections.

Throughout the episode, host Kathy shares her own experience of laughing spontaneously during her husband's funeral when a friend placed a cup of Tim Horton's coffee on the podium—a meaningful symbol of their daily ritual together. This moment of unexpected joy amidst profound grief perfectly illustrates Nancy's message: grief contains multitudes of emotions that can coexist, sometimes in the same moment.

Nancy concludes with her motto, "You don't have to grieve alone," and invites listeners to join her free online grief support group. In community, what seems unbearable becomes bearable as we hold space for each other's pain and, sometimes, unexpected moments of joy. 

Contact:
www.asiliveandgrieve.com
info@asiliveandgrieve.com
Facebook:  As I Live and Grieve
Instagram:  @asiliveandgrieve
YouTube:  asiliveandgrieve
TikTok: @asiliveandgrieve

To Contact  Nancy:
Email: nancy@nancyweil.com
Website: thelaughacademy.com

Credits: 
Music by Kevin MacLeod 

Copyright 2020, by As I Live and Grieve

The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. 

Transcript

Welcome to As I Live and Grieve

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to as I Live and Grieve, a podcast that tells the truth about how hard this is. We're glad you joined us today. We know how hard it is to lose someone you love and how well-intentioned friends and family try so hard to comfort us. We created this podcast to provide you with comfort, knowledge and support. We are grief advocates, not professionals, not licensed therapists. We are you.

Speaker 2 0:28

Hi everyone, welcome back again to another episode of as I Live in Grief. I know I say it most every week. I've got another great guest. You're going to love this lady. This is my friend, nancy, that I met on the grief cruise that I went on. Hey, nancy, thanks for joining me. How are you? Oh, I'm doing well. Quite an exciting offer that you made me to be part of your podcast, especially after working with you on the grief cruise and getting to know you better and really your mission of bringing healing to people who have lost a spouse. It's a big deal what you do. Oh, thank you so so much, so much. I appreciate it.

Meet Nancy: End-of-Life Ministry Expert

Speaker 2 1:07

To get us started, would you just introduce yourself, tell a little bit of your story to our listeners and let them know who is Nancy? That's a deep, esoteric question. Who am I really? Well, you can handle it. Who am I really? But I'll keep you in the handle of the parts that would be relevant to the audience today.

Speaker 2 1:27

I'm Nancy Weil. I have been working in grief support for over 18 years now. At one point, when I lived in Buffalo, I had the most comprehensive grief support program of any funeral home or cemetery in the country. I work for funeral homes and I did work for cemeteries, so I have a background in death surfaces and it has been a passion of mine. I am a funeral celebrant so I have officiated at funerals. I am certified in grief support and have run grief support groups, both in person and now I run one twice a month on Zoom that anybody who is looking is welcome We'll give you my information later is welcome to join in my grief support group that is on Zoom twice a month. I have really found it to be a calling and I call it end of life ministry. I am also, on the other side of it, a certified laughter leader. So I do. I say laughter and tears that balance, but have research into how we use laughter and humor as coping mechanism when we are grieving, and so I kind of bring this broad spectrum approach to grief and help people to get the tools to cope as they're going through this grief journey. And it really is.

Speaker 2 2:49

For me there's something very special in being with people through that, from the time of immediate loss where they're in a fog and things feel hopeless, and following them through our grief group journey together till they graduate and they say you know what. I don't think I need to come anymore, and for me that is bittersweet, because I'm really happy that we were able to walk with them when they needed us and that they don't anymore. And then there's a part of me with the abandonment issues like where are you going? I really like you, and so I do stay in touch with some of the people who have been part of my group. And finally, there are times where they join back in again because now they had another loss and it's just. Life becomes this journey and I am there to accompany them on some of the dark parts of it. I have a little plaque here in my office that says everyone wants to be the sun to brighten up someone's life, but why not be the moon to shine on someone's darkest hour? Oh, I love that and I think that I would love to be blue. Yeah, very nice. In short, listeners, nancy is one extremely busy lady as well. I know for a fact that when she meets someone who is grieving when she meets most people, but grievers especially they become part of her extended family. I have seen her waving from afar to someone she recognizes, because that person remains in her heart. So I feel very, very blessed to get Nancy with me.

Permission to Laugh While Grieving

Speaker 2 4:24

Today we're going to talk about something related to grief that, for me, used to fill me with guilt. I remember specifically at my late husband Tom's funeral it was just after calling hours we had like a little celebration of life. His military buddies were there in their uniforms, they were guarding his urn. They were switching off every 15 minutes. They would salute when they approached, they would salute when they left. It was a very solemn celebration, the main eulogy the minister said is there anyone else who would like to share a story about Tom? One of his very good friends stood up, walked to the podium and in his hand he had a cup of Tim Horton's coffee and he just said it on the podium. I giggled loud enough. Everyone could hear me. I was mortified. I was so embarrassed and humiliated.

Speaker 2 5:26

Tim Horton's coffee was something that was part of Tom's daily routine and even the months that he was in the facility on hospice I would take him a cup of Tim Horton's coffee every single day. He eventually got to the point where his swallowing was affected from the brain cancer and the nurses said he could no longer have Tim Horton. I still brought him that cup of coffee and would dab a few drops on his tongue or on his lips so he could still have his daily coffee. The fact that Tim, his good friend, brought this cup to the podium just brought back that memory of all the days that Tom and I went to Horton's and made me laugh. So, nancy, how do we get to the point where we allow ourselves to accept that humor? I will get to that.

Speaker 2 6:18

But, kathy, a former Western New Yorker and not knowing how wide your audience is, let us us backtrack for those of us in the know. Two forties for, as those of us um, in western new york, call it timmy hose and a coffee and donut chain that originated up in canada and has made its way down. And, um, my boys both had jobs in high school working there. It is very near and dear to the heart of anyone who lives near one and it does become quite a bit of an addiction for many people to always have their daily Tim Hortons coffee. It's part of the routine and, as you said, going there and sitting and having a cup of coffee together, it is a part of a ritual. And we can get rituals in a minute and I'll talk about laughter first, but I love your story because many of us can picture that who know? And so, to anyone who's traveling and doesn't have a Tim Hortons, I would encourage you if you happen to be traveling somewhere where there is one, you need to stop and experience our traditions up there, absolutely so.

Speaker 2 7:34

How do we laugh? Right? I call it laughter in the face of tears. And how do we give ourselves permission to laugh? Right? I want to. I want to step back a second. It does it usually immediately. We will feel guilty. How can I laugh when my loved one has died? When we step back into what it does to us physiologically, that will be the beginning of giving yourself permission. So I'm not going to go into all of the things that happen when we laugh.

Speaker 2 8:02

However, when we laugh when we are grieving, it boosts the immune system, which we know gets depleted when we are grieving. It helps with stress. It reduces stress and stress hormones, which we know are running very, very high. It helps with memory retention, which, again, we know we live by post-it notes because we can't remember anything. Our brain just slows down, it's in a fog. So, when we laugh, we are reducing stress and boosting our immune system and it levels the emotions a little bit and helps with the brain function. All of these things start to happen because we go. I then encourage people to think about if your doctor wrote your prescription and says no copay available anytime and I'm going to boost your immune system and reduce your stress, and all of these things are going to happen. You're like sign me up Absolutely Helps to give you permission, right, pure physiological, taking care of yourself. It helps right there. Okay, from that, it also emotionally reminds us that there is still joy in the memories. Yes, they become bittersweet, but there's sweetness in them and so as we share those stories.

Sharing Stories: The Gift to Grievers

Speaker 2 9:20

It's not so morose they live their life. They had a fullness of life. It's not so morose they lived their life, they had a fullness of life. Remembering those stories and laughing together with others who remember brings us into that moment of really celebrating their life. And in the research I did, one of the questions we asked was my loved one would want me to laugh and be happy again? 100% of the people responded yes. So the disconnect is we know they don't want us to be sad and grieve forever, right, just like we would not want suffering on those we leave behind. We just can't get there because we miss them. And so as we begin to incorporate that, we give ourselves permission to laugh. Right Helps us to heal. And the interesting thing that we just do not talk about but I had realized early on is that one of the greatest gifts of laughter is it brings us into the present moment of now. When we're laughing, we're not thinking, we're not, we're just here and now present.

Speaker 2 10:23

And I say grief is a process of looking back in regret and looking forward in fear. Someone is grieving rarely did they look at their future and see unicorns and rainbows? No, and so we have a lot of anxiety when we're grieving how are we going to make it through this? How are we going to do that? How are we going to handle financials, whatever that is is or we look backwards with, oh, I shouldn't have yelled at him 10 years ago when we were making dinner. Right, we do this, everybody does this. We do this. But when we laugh, we're here now and we get relief for a moment, especially if it's spontaneous and that laughter for me was spontaneous and what you know, because they're hugging me and everything and so many people just don't know what to say. But a good friend of mine hugged me and said I'm so glad you laughed because I felt like it gave everyone in the room permission to do the same. Yeah, we need space for both. We need laughter and we need tears. Neither one of us is saying, oh, just be in joy all the time. That's a pretty big stretch to ask someone Right, right, and most have both. Yeah, and most of our lives, tom and I, we were married for just under 12 years. We married later in life, but we had been friends for 20 years before that. His middle son dated my younger daughter for a little. That's how we met. Middle son dated my younger daughter for a little. That's how we met. At any rate, our life was filled with more laughter than tears by a long shot, so we spent most of our time together laughing.

Speaker 2 12:03

I also felt it was kind of natural for me to kind of laugh at the stories that were being told, the memories that were being shared, because a lot of them were quite humorous. They really were. Yeah, what can you say to someone? Is it better to think of a memory that makes you smile, that you think would make them smile? If you want to recall something Because grievers love to hear those stories it lets us know that the loved one that was so huge a part of our life was also important to others and made an impact on others. So if we're trying to recall a memory, is it better to find a light hearted one? I think it's just important to find the one that resonates with you the most when you go to share something.

Speaker 2 12:48

Okay, I had this discussion yesterday with my daughter because a mentor of hers who helped her she's a mental health therapist and had helped her with her licensing and oversight and she just found out that he had died and she was telling me you know what he had done and how instrumental and helpful he was when she was in those early years after graduating college. And I said you need to write that down and tell the family that story. And she said I think I'm going to go to the wake, mom, and I'm going to tell them that. I said it's going to mean so much because what happens is we don't know all the people that our loved one interacts with know who they are. And so, all of a sudden, when these stories come whether it's a letter and a note that they send us or they come to the wake and share the story we don't know those things. And for us to see the ripple effect of what they have done and how they have positively impacted others, we just draw on that sometimes, yeah, yeah, oh, to know what a difference they made, because we know what a difference they made to us. But see, the small little moments and most of these are moments that if you knew your loved one you think they wouldn't think twice about that Like that's insignificant, but to the person it meant so much, yeah, and that they associate your loved one with that story. And so, whether it's a funny story or it's a emotionally connecting story.

Speaker 2 14:15

We just want stories, yeah, yeah, and if we can, let's talk about stories a second. Can we do that, kat? Absolutely. That was my theme on Tuesday night at my grief group, so I'm a little into it. That's super. We discussed it and so we looked at it a couple of ways. A, remembering our loved one's stories and recording them and writing them down for future generations Right, and our own story. When we talk about the dash between the dates of birth and death, it's the things that get missed out. Is what was their favorite flavor of ice cream? Right? What class did they like the most in school? We know some of the big things, but so often we don't know the little things and how treasured those things are. And so we talked about that recording, whether it's on a video, whether it's on a recorder of audio, whether it's writing it down.

Creating Meaningful Rituals for Remembrance

Speaker 2 15:06

My dad, after mom died, his coping, was writing down all these family stories. He has a little bound book. Yeah, he's written five of them so far. Oh, my goodness, tell him. But they're more like. Here were some funny things that were sent to me in my email. He's giving us addresses of where people lived that we could know and stories we would never have known about. His grandparents or my mother's grandparents are going back generationally, and so for us to have those stories and be able to pass those on to future generations, where otherwise they'll be forgotten. He added photos, family photos. There's no better inheritance than that. Absolutely what a legacy, yeah, and so here's where I'm going to go a little deeper on this. Okay, and I love, because this is something I have said for many years and now they're finding through epigenetics, through research it's actually true, but think I said something that's actually being proven.

Speaker 2 16:12

But what I tell people who are grieving and feeling very hopeless and desperate and I do this, I can't do another day of this, right, I tell them to do one of two things. I tell them to either look back in their own life at a time that was very difficult and they didn't think they'd make it through, and they did and remind themselves that yeah, you made it through and you can do this. I said, and if you don't have that, actually I told them three things. That's one look at your own life. The second thing I told them is go back in your family history and think of the stories of the difficult times that one of your ancestors went through. None of us have someone, maybe, who came over and started a new life. Many of us have, maybe, someone who was a soldier and went through war. Many of us have a story ancestrally that we can say they made it through and the DNA that runs in them runs in me and I can pull from their strength and make it through. And the DNA that runs in them runs in me and I can pull from their strength and make it through.

Speaker 2 17:18

My great grandmother had five little girls. The youngest was a newborn at the time that my great grandfather died of pneumonia, years old, so she was about 30. And she never remarried. She built a career in the early 1900s, taking over his job as a rice broker on the docks of Charleston, south Carolina, at a time when women didn't do that, and we were always so impressed with the strength she had in raising those girls. And as an adult I remember saying to my grandma it's so interesting that your parents only had girls. And she said, oh no, I had two brothers. One died in infancy and one is a toddler from the diseases of the time.

Speaker 2 17:56

All of a sudden I realized that my great grandmother, by the time she was 30, had buried two children and a husband and somehow still found the strength within her to persevere. And when I went through my hard times I thought, all right, I can draw on her strength. Sure, yeah, my hard times, thankfully, have paled. Go through, yeah, yeah. And then the third thing I say is, if you don't have your own story and if you don't have an ancestral story, find stories of people who inspire you, right, whether it's a documentary or a movie about someone's life or a little right, oh, video clip of somebody speaking who's an inspirational speaker, who overcame the odds. Borrow their story of inspiration right. And sometimes you're gonna in grief support group, we're gonna borrow from each other. Right, and finding that inspiration that says I can be more resilient and strong than I think that's's wonderful, that's wonderful.

Speaker 2 18:54

And on the same topic of storytelling, another guest I had very recently, in fact, suggested that we not just tell our stories, we relive our stories, to immerse ourselves in the memories as we're telling the stories. It's important to our future generations. Every so often I live in the same house as my daughter, her husband and their two sons, my grandsons that I love dearly, they're the blessings of my life and every so often they're at the age now where they love cars. So I will tell them a story about a car I drove. And one day Nate said to me Grandma, how did you get to drive all those cool cars? I said I lived in the 60s. You see, you see movies about the 60s, but that's when I lived. Cars were important. So little things like that and just those little stories. And they've told me that they love those little stories that pop up here and there, those little memories, because it helps them learn more who I was as a younger person. So we need to share those stories because I guarantee, if you do, after you're gone those stories will pop up again. They really will, absolutely.

Speaker 2 20:00

Yeah, you know I had mentioned earlier. I said we'll get back to it. So I want to honor what I said about rituals. I was just going to ask about that. Let's talk about it. You got right on it too. You know, rituals can take a lot of different forms and we can't we could do a whole segment on it, but so often those rituals, we will create some after someone has died, whether it's on the anniversary of their birth, on the anniversary of their death, on our wedding anniversaries, whatever significant dates or holidays. We will oftentimes create a ritual, and that might be visiting their grave or decorating it in the spring. I know somebody whose husband was a major Yankees fan and the family all puts together things and goes out and decorates the grave for the spring to have up all summer, right, with all the different Yankees memorabilia and that ritual now, because they do it every year, right. So sometimes the ritual is on their birthday, making their favorite kind of cake and inviting people over, telling the stories and celebrating their life and enjoying one of their favorite recipes. And so we can create rituals.

Speaker 2 21:10

My family has an interesting ritual. My brother started it. I don't know why he started it and he only started it around one grandparent, not the other three. I don't know the other, but it's called Buki Day. We call my grandfather Buki and on his birthday, november 26, all of the grandchildren we pull his photo out of the China cabinet or where we display it and it sits on a table and we have dinner with Buki, all share photos to each other and text messages Buki day and we do this. Why, I don't know, but it's a ritual. Now we won't have a November 26 on his birthday and not pull out and have dinner with him.

Speaker 2 21:49

So, again, we can create these rituals, spread them, share them within the family, but the point of them is to remember to have a coping mechanism, to celebrate because that day is going to come, whatever your significant dates are, whether you have something planned around it or not. That's right. Right, it's there, we're not going to forget. I always say the heart has no calendar. It's your nose, you know it misses someone, so there's no timeline. And so, when those dates come, how much nicer if we can ritualize and bring others into them, absolutely.

Speaker 2 22:25

My ritual is very simple. Guess what it is. I go to Tim Hortons. That's money, again, just the memory of tom. So I go to tim hortons and I just raise my coffee and and I know he's right there with me yeah, rituals can be very simple. They can be very complex.

Speaker 2 22:42

In my parents generation, the ritual was that you always went to the cemetery, you went to the gravesite. Well, that doesn't always work now cremremations and so many things. You know people maybe are sharing ashes or spreading them places, so you might not have a great site to go to. So you can create a ritual, doing anything you want. You can make it a day of memories. You could just make it a day of raising a glass or a day where you sit quietly, perhaps in the park, maybe take your dog for a walk, sit quietly and just remember, and you probably are doing a ritual and may not even realize that that's what you're doing.

Speaker 2 23:20

But on those anniversaries of the dates of their death, for some reason we remember those dates very specifically and your thoughts always go to them and you're reliving it. As you talk about reliving stories, sometimes the stories are traumatic. Yeah, absolutely so. To be able to shift it a little bit, when my brother died, I arranged to have a yellow rose bush delivered to her house and planted it in her yard. Every year she puts me on to a FaceTime and says look, look, it's blooming, it's blooming, look how much it's blooming Every year, every year, yeah, ritual, right, and yeah, and that means so much to her. That's just a relatively simple gift that you can give, but it's so important to grievers when someone else comes to you or says to you or shares a photo with you or something that says this made me think of for me. I love it when that happens. Yeah, I miss Tom too, or something like that. Those things are so meaningful to me that I start to get choked up every time I think about them. Of course they're meaningful.

Speaker 2 24:28

I have one more question about humor, and then we'll wrap things up. Since you are a funeral officiant and you have helped people plan their funerals, their celebrations and things like that, has anyone ever asked you to plan one specifically that's more lighthearted or that will make people laugh or smile? Sure, absolutely. People set the tone that they want, and my job is to capture the essence of their loved one and how they want to memorialize them at that moment. And so if that person was a very funny person and lighthearted, they'll say we don't want to be morose, that's not who they are, that doesn't honor them, that's not who like. Who are you talking about? They were never serious, right. And it also depends sometimes on the circumstance of how someone died. Well, that's true. And so if it was something where I'll give you a great story I love stories my grandmother died at 109 years old.

Speaker 2 25:34

Well, we were having this graveside service and each of us was sharing a little memory about my grandmother, and my oldest brother's turned to speak and he turns to everybody and he says what Two cannibals were having to do welcome what. And he goes in the one side of the other one I never did like your mother-in-law and he goes well, then just eat the potatoes. And he looks at us and he goes oh, that was my grandmother's favorite joke. Now I was a grandchild. She never told me that, yeah, yeah, but my oldest brother remembered her sharing that joke with him and laughing and laughing because that favorite joke. And so we let him telling stories about her, and my dad afterwards said that the cemetery workers were like over, standing off waiting for us to, and he said they kept turning around because they were laughing and they didn't want to be seen as being inappropriate. Yeah, he said, well, we were funny. That's the little one. Yes, I love that. That's an honor to my grandmother. Wow, and so it's okay. It's okay. Well, I know that now it's okay, buddy. Okay, so, sadly, the time has come where we need to start to wrap things up.

Connect with Nancy's Grief Support Group

Speaker 2 26:41

This is the point in my podcast where I turn the microphone over to my guest so that you can speak directly to our listeners, and we do, by the way, have an international audience. We have listeners in over 100 countries around the world, and so they don't know Tim Hortons. They may have heard the story before, or at least the cup of coffee might cinch it for them. So this is your chance to speak directly to the listeners. The floor is yours, thank you. I just want them all to know my motto is you don't have to grieve alone, and so if anybody is listening or has someone they want to suggest that would like to join in my Healing Hearts Grief Support Group that is on Zoom first and third Tuesday every month, they are welcome to join us. We're at seven o'clock Eastern time.

Speaker 2 27:23

Healing Hearts Grief Support Group that is on Zoom first and third Tuesday every month. They are welcome to join us. We're at seven o'clock Eastern time, so think about your time zone. Sorry if you'll be the middle of the night, but we will be together. If anybody's interested, they can email me at nancy, at nancyweilcom, which is N-A-N-C-Y-W-E-I-Lcom. My website is the laugh academycom and on there you will see a tab for the grief academy and the support group. Information is on there as well. But truly, to join together in community as we do, there is something magical that we know that one another is holding the other one in our hearts, and so for anybody who listens to this, you know you are not alone in your journey. You know there are others who care and who understand, and somehow, when they say the phrase misery loves company, I think there's truth to that, because we do hold one another and make what seems unbearable bearable, and I thank you for your ministry of helping others at these difficult times Beautiful and eloquent words.

Speaker 2 28:33

It reminded me of a quote. I think it's from Shakespeare and I may not quote it precisely, but it is something like and if I laugh at any mortal thing, it is only that I may not weep, and I think that really fits as well. So, listeners, if you didn't have a pen or pencil handy when Nancy was citing her website, that information will be in the podcast notes. So just click the notes and you'll see it, and it should be a direct link where you can just click on it and it will take you right to the website or your email box will pop up so you can send her a message. I know she'd love to hear from you, and wouldn't you want to be a part of her extended family? I would be so honored, okay, so I also want to remind everybody to take care of yourselves wherever you are in our world.

Speaker 2 29:20

Self-care is vital as you're grieving. Grief is a long journey. We've all talked about that so many times as well. So, whatever you do, take care of yourself. Check Nancy's website out, send her a message, pop into her grief group. I know you'll enjoy that experience as well. And it's free. We love free things, don't we All? Righty Time to go. I hope you have fun this week and I hope you will find the time again to listen in the next time as we all continue to live and grieve.

Speaker 1 29:54

Thanks, nancy, thanks Kathy. Thank you so much for listening with us today. Do you have a topic that you'd like us to cover or do you have a question from one of our episodes? Please email us at info at asiliveandgrievecom and let us know. We hope you will find a moment to leave a review, send an email and share with others. Join us next time as we continue to live and grieve together.