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Laughing Again After Loss (and why it feels illegal at first)

If you have recently lost someone you love and now being happy feel illegal, don’t worry, your’e not alone.

I didn’t realise grief, cam with rules, and apparently not laughing is one of them.

I can remember the first tie I laughed after my dad died, and i mean like properly laughed and felt joy and happiness. it was exactly 6 days after and me and my mum had gone to play darts as we are part of the local team (yes I know who plays darts at 26???) we always have such a laugh and a gossip with the team, that consists of mainly my family members and neighbours, and this was no exception. But what was odd about this, was the intense guilt i felt immediately after laughing, and went I spoke to my mum about it, she said she felt the same, almost as if we were minimising my dads death for experiencing joy, because for the first moment in 144 hours, for a couple seconds, my dads death and the intense pain we both felt disappeared, and that just felt…wrong…and sometimes, even 5 months down the line, it still feels wrong to feel happy sometimes.

I know I am not the only one who experienced this so i wanted to look into why. This happens because grief teaches us that pain is loyalty. When someone we love dies, suffering can feel like the only appropriate response, as if letting ourselves feel joy means we are leaving them behind. Our brains try to protect the bond by keeping the pain close, because pain feels like proof of love. So when happiness appears, even briefly, it can trigger guilt, not because it is wrong, but because it challenges the belief that love must always hurt. Over time, we slowly learn that joy does not replace grief. It simply exists alongside it.

I felt what often followed this was what i like to call a ‘guilt hangover‘ that isn’t just subject to laughing and feeling momentary happiness, but will show its stupid ugly face on a range of different occasion’s, but today we will just focus on specifically after laughter. You question yourself. You wonder if you laughed too loudly or for too long, if people were looking at you thinking you looked too happy for someones whose dad has just died (ps no one is thinking that). The joy itself fades almost immediately, but the guilt has a way of settling in and staying. It is exhausting, because you are not just grieving the person you lost, you are now also managing the feeling that you did something wrong by feeling okay, even briefly.

One of the ways I like to cope, as do many people my age, is by dark humour. I love it. What is the point in your dad dying if you can make someone uncomfortable by joking about it? or better yet, make someone who is also part of the dead parent club laugh, because that creates a connection that i cannot explain to poeple outside of the club. Why is laughing and joking about something so serious not only valid, but almost relieving? Because as I always say ‘if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry’. Literally. There is evidence that laughing can help the body regulate grief in much the same way that crying does. Both release built up emotional tension, lower stress hormones, and shift the nervous system out of survival mode. It is not the emotion itself that matters, but the release it creates.

Now, this is important to read and internalise, especially if youre in the new trenches of loosing a loved one: Laughing does not mean you have forgotten them, replaced them, or suddenly moved on with your life. It does not mean you are coping too well, doing grief wrong, or secretly fine. It does not mean the loss mattered less or that love has an expiry date. It usually just means someone said something mildly funny, or you surprised yourself by breathing a little easier for a moment. And that is allowed, even if it does not always feel like it is.

Grief does not disappear when you laugh. It waits for you afterwards, just as heavy, just as real. But laughter does not disrespect loss, and it does not erase love. It simply proves that you are still human inside the pain. If joy sneaks in for a moment, let it. You will grieve again soon enough. For now, it is okay to laugh, even with guilt sitting beside you, because both can exist at the same time.

Thanks for reading and remember, you’re doing better than you think you are. Diolch and adios.