The Child Who Laughed at the Funeral
A story about the way grief hides in plain sight
I once worked with a boy who laughed at his grandfather’s funeral.
Not just a quiet giggle or a nervous smile, but full-bodied laughter—out of place, loud, wrong.
Everyone in the pews looked away. Some frowned. His aunt whispered that he must not have understood what was happening.
But he did.
He understood exactly what was happening.
It was the rest of us who didn’t.
He was eight years old. His grandfather was his world—his bedtime stories, his Saturday routine, his warm hand on the walk home from school. And then, in one ordinary week, the world cracked.
No one knew how to help him grieve. No one gave him words.
They told him to be strong for his mum. They told him Grandad was “gone to a better place.” They told him to sit still and behave.
So he laughed.
It bubbled out of him like steam from a pressure cooker.
Not because he was being disrespectful. Not because he thought it was funny.
But because no one had given him another way to release what was building inside.
When grief has nowhere to go, it finds its own exit.
Sometimes it walks out quietly in tears.
Sometimes it shouts and slams doors.
And sometimes it comes out sideways—disguised as laughter, numbness, even joy.
We’re taught to think of grief as something obvious. A black armband. A crying spell. A moment of silence. But grief is rarely that cooperative.
It slips behind the masks we wear.
It shows up in the child who suddenly can't sleep.
In the adult who throws themselves into work.
In the teenager who makes dark jokes that make everyone uncomfortable.
And if you tell these people to “open up,” they might stare at you blankly. Because they don’t have the words yet. Or the permission.
The grief that looks like bad behaviour
That same boy—the one who laughed—started refusing to go to school three weeks later. He became angry. Defiant. Then silent.
His teacher called it oppositional behaviour.
His mum thought he was regressing.
But when I asked him what happened that day in the church, he looked at the floor and whispered:
“I didn’t know where to put it.”
That’s what grief does.
It overwhelms the system. And if the system doesn’t feel safe enough to fall apart, it adapts. It hides. It performs.
We reward the quiet child and say they’re “coping well.”
We worry about the angry one.
But more often than not, they’re grieving in the only language they’ve got.
We miss it in adults too.
Adults are better at hiding.
They can nod politely through condolences and go back to work.
They’ll crack a joke at the wake.
They’ll clean the entire kitchen three times in one night and call it “keeping busy.”
But underneath that: the same storm.
The same pressure cooker.
The same fear that if they let it out, it might never stop.
Grief isn’t just sadness. It’s disorientation. It’s rage. It’s terror.
It’s the brain trying to process the impossible and the body trying to feel safe again.
And when someone is in that state, the last thing they need is advice.
They need to know they can fall apart in front of someone without being judged for it.
So what do we do?
We stop looking for the “right” way to grieve.
We stop expecting it to look like it does in films.
We start watching more closely. Listening more slowly.
We learn to sit with the mess.
Because real grief is chaotic.
It’s silent one minute, explosive the next.
It’s scrolling mindlessly at 2am.
It’s losing your temper over nothing.
It’s laughing at a funeral because no one gave you a script for anything else.
I’ve seen a lot of grief.
In children. In teenagers. In adults who never really grew out of their childhood heartbreaks.
I’ve seen people grieve pets more deeply than parents.
I’ve seen people feel guilty for not crying, and ashamed because they couldn’t stop.
If I’ve learned anything, it’s this:
Grief isn’t a feeling.
It’s a landscape.
And everyone finds their own way through it.
I don’t have a perfect tool.
But I do believe in better support.
If you’re someone who holds space for others—whether you’re a parent, teacher, coach, or therapist—and you want to understand how to walk beside someone in that wild landscape of grief, I do teach that.
Not with a script.
Not with quick fixes.
But with the depth and care people deserve when everything they know has changed.
And if this piece spoke to you personally—if you're holding something quietly inside and don’t know where to take it—I do offer a small number of 1:1 spaces too.
No pressure. No “get better soon.”
Just a place to not do this alone.
