How to be a Merry Widow by Mary Essinger

Author:Mary Essinger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: A self-help book for widows;widowhood;bereavement;a new life;enjoying yourself
Publisher: The Conrad Press
Published: 2019-03-14T15:12:08+00:00

8. GO FOR COMEDY GO FOR CULTURE

To keep happy go for comedy. Merry widows love to laugh. Ronnie Barker, Tommy Cooper, we watch them over and over. Why? Because they make us laugh and laughter is essential for good health. Laughter boosts our immune system helping us to stay well. Comedy is not trivial, comedy is medicine.

Glance through any TV listings and the word ‘comedy’ will immediately attract the viewer and there are never enough of these programs to meet demand. Every night at 6.30pm there is something light on Radio 4; people have come home from work, listened to the six o’clock news and are ready for their spirits to be lifted by something funny. Comedy gives another perspective on the world, a different way of looking at things. If you can make a joke about a serious matter it takes away the sting and empowers us.

People stop me in the street and solemnly ask, ‘How are you getting on?’

‘Fine,’ is my usual reply, ‘no shirts to iron.’ They look taken aback and sometimes rather disappointed but it makes me feel better. Comedy is a serious business and born of adversity. Jewish humour is famous. It comes from two thousand years of oppression.

‘Knock knock’.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Are you the widow Cohen?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Have I got news for you!’

Things can be said in jokes that cannot otherwise easily be said. Schoolboys give funny nicknames to teachers they fear because it gives the child the upper hand. Comedy has power.

At the time of the war in Vietnam when US soldiers were being killed and people demanded an end to the fighting, a satirical song became extremely popular in America.

… ‘Be the first on the block

To have your boy come home in a box.’

The US government tried to ban it but the song helped to end the war. Comedy confronts tragedy head on.

A dirty, foulmouthed old man lives in squalor with his forty-year-old bachelor son. The son, with neither talent nor great intelligence, aspires to an intellectual life of elegant living. He blames his father for standing in the way of achieving this better life but in reality the son does not have the courage or imagination to change anything. The stuff of tragedy you may think, but this is the scenario for Steptoe and Son, the enormously popular sitcom of the 1960s and 1970s.

Comedy is the bedfellow of tragedy. Seek out laughter and look for the funny side of things.

Do like other widows, buy yourself weeds and be cheerful.

John Gay The Beggar’s Opera

Whenever I heard the phrase ‘Culture and the Arts’ I used to feel like running to hide in a cupboard in case somebody was forcing me to enjoy myself. This was a foolish reaction because millions of pounds of tax-payers’ money goes into subsidising cultural activities such as art, music and theatre. We need beauty as much as we need bread and all that is fine and beautiful finds its expression in the arts. A cultural interest is life enhancing and being widowed is a wonderful opportunity to develop and explore these interests.

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