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My uncle's cancer joke at Thanksgiving dinner in Boise split the table and I still don't know who was right
So last Thanksgiving at my aunt's place in Boise, my uncle Dave, who was actually midway through chemo at the time, dropped a joke about his own hair falling out faster than his 401k. Half the table laughed hard, including my cousin who's a nurse, and the other half went dead quiet, and my mom shot him this look like he'd just ruined the holiday. I laughed at first and then felt weird about it for the rest of the night, so I pulled him aside in the kitchen while we were doing dishes and asked if stuff like that really helps, and he said making those jokes is the only thing that keeps him from losing his mind, which honestly made me feel worse for hesitating. Then my sister texted me later saying she thought it was in poor taste because our grandma had passed from cancer a few years back, and she wasn't wrong either. I've been going back and forth on this for weeks now. I don't think there's one clean answer here. When it's the person actually going through it making the joke, does that change how it should land for everyone else at the table?
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phoenix_bailey27d ago
One thing though, and I say this gently: your grandma passing doesn't actually make your uncle's joke bad. Those are two different people with two different cancers and two different ways of coping. Your sister's grief is real but she's kind of putting her stuff onto his moment, and he's the one in chemo right now. Doesn't mean she's wrong to feel how she feels, just that her feeling isn't the same as the joke being in poor taste.
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