A Happy Death

First of all, I'd just like to point out that I thought it was ironic that on the title page of this graphic piece, it says that it was taken from Fun Home. I don't know if that is a magazine or another work by Alison Bechdel or if it is intentionally part of the satire of the piece, but I couldn't help but to realize that the majority of the story takes place in and around a f-u-n-eral home.

The tone of the story and the constant look of boredom/annoyance on the main character's face seemed to add to the dark humor it provoked in the reader. Even though this piece examines death and how the characters deal with the death of a family member after living their lives around the subject, I found it quite comical at times. I’ve managed to live my life without being affected very closely by death, so protocol for how to act and how much to show your emotions when someone has died is quite foreign to me. I appreciate that the mood it portrays is dark, but not necessarily depressing. It brings up the idea that when a person dies, people don’t always feel the need to follow the expected grieving process. It considers the possibility that our society makes such a huge ordeal out of the proper way to mourn that people become swept away by the ceremony of it all, making it hard for them to move forward. It also makes it more difficult for those who move on quickly to do so without being made to feel guilty. “If only they made smelling salts to induce grief-stricken swoons, rather than snap you out of them.” For the girl and her brothers, death was all part of the family business, and a fact of life they came to terms with at a young age. Just because they weren’t hunched over the casket bawling their eyes out doesn’t mean they weren’t grieving or that they didn’t understand the gravity of their father’s death. They just had a different way of dealing with the loss because seeing death as a natural part of life was something they were already so familiar with.