I'm a big fan of gallows humor. When my aunt passed away, she was

When Amanda Peet said, “I’m a big fan of gallows humor. When my aunt passed away, she was in a coma for a day before my cousins pulled the plug. And the amount of joking and base humor that went on that day around her bed was so insane. It’s crazy how people talk when something horrible is happening,” she gave voice to a truth as old as humankind itself: that in the face of death, the living must find a way to breathe. Her words do not celebrate cruelty, but rather the sacred absurdity of survival—the way the human heart, when pressed by grief, releases its tension through laughter. For even as sorrow darkens the soul, humor rises like a small flame, trembling but unextinguished, daring to shine against despair’s shadow.

The origin of this wisdom lies deep in the human spirit’s long struggle against suffering. Since the dawn of consciousness, people have sought refuge in laughter when standing at the edge of life and death. Warriors on the eve of battle, prisoners awaiting execution, nurses tending to the dying—all have found solace in the strange, fierce joy of gallows humor. It is the laughter of those who see death clearly and still refuse to surrender to its silence. When Amanda Peet recalls her family’s laughter beside the deathbed, she is describing not disrespect but resilience—a communal act of defiance in the presence of loss. The “crazy” talk that filled that room was not madness but medicine, a language older than speech itself.

To understand this fully, one must look beyond the surface. Gallows humor is not born from the heartless, but from the wounded. It is the laughter of those who have looked into the abyss and decided, even so, to smile. The Roman philosopher Seneca, in his exile, once wrote that fortune’s cruelty can destroy everything except one thing—the mind’s freedom to choose how it reacts. In this spirit, gallows humor becomes an act of spiritual rebellion: the final claim of control in a world that strips control away. When grief threatens to crush, laughter becomes a way of saying, “You may take my loved one, my comfort, even my hope—but you cannot take my spirit.”

History bears witness to this paradoxical courage. In the dark corridors of World War II concentration camps, survivors tell of prisoners who exchanged jokes in whispers, sometimes even as they marched toward labor or death. One survivor recalled how humor gave them a brief taste of humanity amid the inhuman. “We laughed,” he said, “not because there was anything funny, but because it was the only thing we could still do freely.” So too, Amanda Peet’s family, in that sterile hospital room, found the same ancient strength—the need to connect, to breathe, to reclaim the spark of life even as death hovered near. Their laughter was not a rejection of grief, but a prayer whispered through it.

And yet, to those who have not walked such valleys, gallows humor can appear harsh or indecent. But the ancients knew that truth often wears the mask of contradiction. The philosopher Heraclitus once said, “The path upward and the path downward are one and the same.” So it is with laughter and sorrow—they are not opposites, but reflections of one another. Both are born from the awareness of our fragility, and both arise when that fragility is tested. To laugh in dark times is not to deny pain; it is to bear it, to lighten it, to give it form so that it does not consume us whole.

Amanda Peet’s story reminds us that grief is not always solemn, nor is reverence always silent. Around that hospital bed, humor became an act of love—a way of holding the unbearable, of keeping the air alive when hearts were breaking. For when people laugh together in tragedy, they are not laughing at the loss; they are laughing with life itself, insisting that the spark of being must endure. It is a reminder that even in the most terrible moments, love still seeks expression, and sometimes, that expression comes as a joke whispered through tears.

So, my children of light and shadow, take this lesson to heart: do not fear laughter in the midst of sorrow. When the world collapses, and you find yourself standing amid ashes, allow your heart to release its tension through humor. It is not blasphemy—it is bravery. Let your laughter be humble, tender, and human. It is a way of saying to life, “I still belong to you.” When you stand beside the suffering of others, do not silence the gentle jokes that rise; they are the soul’s way of surviving. But let them come from love, not from avoidance—from empathy, not escape.

In the end, gallows humor is not about death—it is about endurance. It is proof that the human spirit will not bow easily, that even in the darkest hours, we can still find light. As Amanda Peet discovered, when “something horrible is happening,” laughter may seem insane—but in truth, it is divine. For to laugh when the heart aches is to declare: I am still alive, and therefore, I still hope. And that, dear listener, is not madness—it is the highest form of courage.