Apr 83 min read

Dead Serious and Punny Ghosts

We had just started tripping, a delightful journey courtesy: homemade artisan magic chocolate mushrooms… not a hard trip… but a pleasant swirling of colors, a heightened awareness, a one with the surroundings, the setting sun, the peacefulness of it all, on that little canal… our toes dipped in the cool water as we all sat on the dock enjoying the surroundings and each other.

“What would you all do if a body just floated by?” I ask. The thought had literally just popped into my head, utterly unfiltered I asked, breaking our silence.

It was suddenly dead quiet. Everyone was staring at me. Everyone was looking at each other… and then…

Someone started laughing… “Why in the FUCK would you even ask that? Wtf is wrong with you?”

Now we were all laughing.

I joked that it was the chocolates. They joked that they all ate the same fucking chocolates and they weren’t thinking about floating corpses. And they had a solid point there… a solid point indeed.

***********

Nearly two decades later and I’m well aware:

OCD? Yes siree…

Sometimes it’s hilarious. Sometimes it’s dark af.

My therapist told me to make it funny. Especially when it felt dark.

Which I am extremely fortunate for because… making morbid and weird and even normal shit funny… is kinda something I love to do.

When it’s dark she said to really lean in. The punchline should basically be to some extent, “oh well, I’m dead…” but funny, right? She didn’t say the part about it being funny, funny… but I did.

***********

So I’m talking to a very near and dear friend of mine. We hadn’t spoken for a while. We’re catching up, seeing what’s going on in each other’s lives and I tell her about my full thyroidectomy surgery. How I have thyroid cancer. How it had spread to my lymph-nodes and how I now had to go through the hassle and annoyance and bs of radiation…

And at some point she cuts me off and was like, “not to make this about me, but why in the fuck of fucks did you not tell me any of this!!!!?????”

Which was a totally fair question.

I told her that I really didn’t want to make a special phone call to tell her bs stuff that in my mind, wasn’t fun but also wasn’t like… “real cancer.” …Like I felt it was a joke telling anyone who had lost a loved one to real cancer… to tell them about my bs cancer.

She proceeded to tell me that I should have told her (she’s right), and that I could always tell her anything no matter what, especially if it’s something she had gone through (I told you she’s a great friend).

I told her she was right, that I totally understood what she was saying and that I had just figured… that since I basically had the designer of cancers…if you will, THE freaking cancer you want, if you’re going to get cancer… that I didn’t want to upset her needlessly. (And then I added that…) Nobody really died from this shit anyway so...

We both laugh.

*Take it further*

To which I of course I naturally had to add…

“But I will say this… and I’m serious… you have to do this for me…” I had said to my friend… she loves a good sick joke just like me…

She listened intently…

“If this SHOULD… per some chance actually wind up killing me… I need you to make absolutely certain that my tombstone will read as follows:

“This is THE freaking cancer you want if you’re going to get cancer.

Nobody really dies from this shit.”

-Vanessa LeVesque*

*dead… from that shit”

My friend is roaring. We both are. I’m also though… dead serious.

A joke… but one that would totally be worth leaving for everyone that should ever find themselves needing a little comic relief on a rough day…