1. Keep It Down

My great grandmother, who was very hard of hearing, was hospitalized at 104 years old. All the relatives piled into her room and sat around talking. Suddenly she sat up and said, “Will you people stop yelling. You’re interrupting my nap!”, then fell back on the pillow dead as a doornail.

2. A Prankster Til The End

My grandfather had lost his legs and used a scooter to get around. He was always a prankster and loved to have fun and joke around. His final act was trying to scare someone at a party. He was trying to sneak up on my uncle. he was going around a small hill and tipped his scooter. Broke multiple bones and died from complications. He thought it was hilarious.

3. Safety Inspection

Not a loved one but perhaps relevant – my uncle helped build large generators for remote villages around the world. He was sent to China where the power plant was in mid-construction. He was given a tour and came across a fairly dangerous hole in the floor that went down several stories, when his co-workers started laughing hysterically. When he asked what was so funny the translator told him that someone had fallen through the hole and died yesterday morning. When he responded why they thought that was so funny, they responded “It was the safety inspector”.

4. Safe Became Sorry

My 100 year old great grandfather fell while walking without his walker. He insisted he was fine, but the nursing home insisted he go to the hospital for a checkup just to be sure. No broken bones, but he contracted pneumonia in the hospital and died from it.

5. The Winter Followed

My parents grew up in Pennsylvania, but moved to North Carolina when I was a kid to get away from harsh winters. My father died of a heart attack while shoveling snow in NC.

6. A Clown’s Death

A good family friend died by choking on a non-inflated balloon. She was elderly and trying to blow up balloons for a baby shower. It was ironic because she worked as a clown for over 10 years when she was young. I thought it was a joke when I first heard what happened.

7. Banana Peel

My great grandmother died by slipping on a banana peel, falling into the corner of a table, and puncturing her lung on it. People try really hard not to laugh when I tell them.

8. High Five

My brother died literally minutes after having sex with a girl. It wasn’t funny at the time, but he would’ve high fived himself.

9. Savage Irony

A guy in my hometown drowned while at work…as a lifeguard

10. Dirty Granny

My grandma dropped dead at the dinner table one night and my mom faked CPR to the 911 operator. Grandma lived with my parents for 5 years before she died and they discovered that Grandma didn’t shower or brush her teeth or wash her hands after using the bathroom (she’d always get shit everywhere and it was always under her nails). Needless to say, when she died my parents called 911, the 911 operator instructed my mom to give Grandma mouth to mouth. My mom, the most honest person I know, couldn’t do it. Instead my mom faked it and lied to the operator, saying she did it….needless to say, Grandma didn’t wake up. Don’t freak out, grandma had congestive heart failure and she was a DNR but, in the moment, nobody thought of that. We still make jokes saying mom killed grandma. Yeah, my family is fucked up like that.

11. Her Favorite Show Was “Six Feet Under”

I had a coworker whose mother died in a freak accident. She’d been rushing to go to work, got in the car, started it and realized that she left her purse on the ground behind her car. She got out of the car, bent over to pick up her purse and her car suddenly rolled backwards and ran over her, killing her instantly.

A week later my coworker was trying to distract himself my watching TV and saw Six Feet Under was on. That was his mom’s favorite show so he stopped and decided to watch it. If you’ve seen that show you know there’s a death at the beginning of the episode. The death that episode? A guy getting run over by his own car.

He said it was so shocking and ironic that he couldn’t help but laugh about it.

12. Suicide Hotline

He took calls for a suicide hotline for 8 years, and then he killed himself. Left a note saying he couldn’t live with himself for talking people out of their desires.

13. Getting High

Not one of my loved ones but one of my dad’s friend died what I considered to be a ‘funny’ death. His best friend was a junkie (as was he) and on his (my dad’s) birthday they wanted to do some heroin but his girlfriend didn’t like him doing the heroin so they climbed up a tree to do it in secret. They got high (in both ways) and then he fell out of the tree and died.

14. This Is It! I Can Feel It!

My grandfather’s heart was 96% clogged for the last ten years of his life. He had diabetes and two forms of cancer.

When they found the cancer, he asked the doctor what he should do. The doctor said, “Well, if you don’t treat it, it’ll kill you in three years.” Then he shrugged and said, “But, I mean, I wouldn’t worry about planning that far ahead.”

One day, he called up the whole family and said, “This is it. I can feel it. This is the moment I am going to die.”

So everybody came out to be with him. We have family in the arctic, in Thailand and in China, and they all came to Ontario to be with him. We sat and talked to him and tried to say comforting thing. Personally, I said, “How are you doing, gramps?” He said, “I’m dying, how the hell do you think I’m doing?”

We all stood by his side that night waiting for him.

And then the next night.

By day three, my uncle started to get impatient. He started saying, “Y’know, I’ve really got to go to work on Monday.”

The people who held out the longest stayed for a week, all just sort of waiting for him to die, but he never did. Eventually, though, everyone had to go back to their own lives, and plus we were getting bored, so we all moved on.

Three months later he called again and said he was dying again, but we weren’t going to fall for that trick twice.

It turned out he was telling the truth that time.

15. Joke’s On You

My friend made a Facebook status almost two years ago right after Halloween that read, “Happy Diabetes Awareness Day” pretty much just as a joke.

He was found dead a day or two later in his apartment. He died from complications due to diabetes. I never even knew he had it.

16. A Fitness Induced Heart Attack

A friend of mine was an athlete, with an amazing body, 6-pack and all of that jazz. Didn’t smoke, drank occasionally. Dropped dead in the middle of the night, in his dorm room, due to a natural heart attack. Doctors said his case was very rare, and is seen only in athletes.

In layman’s term, his heart attack was because of his fitness.

17. Hospital Mix Up

My great-aunt died when the hospital accidentally removed her good kidney, instead of her bad one.

I was just a kid when it happened, so I didn’t find out all the details for a long time. Now that I know, though, I’m kind of upset. You never heard the expression, “Measure twice, cut once”, Mr. Surgeon?

18. “The Man Just Won’t Die”

I’ll put my husband in here.

I had a joke for a long time “The man just WON’T DIE” Thankfully, I was no where near him when he eventually did pass away.

First, he was 18 years older than me, so there were many, many times that I don’t even know about. These are just things I know about in the 20 or so years that I knew him.

• Got into many motorcycle accidents. One that I knew about was a woman pulled out to cross his lane of travel. He saw it coming, so he sorta stood up and did a roll over the top of her car. Barely a scratch on him. Bike was a mess though.
• While driving through a forested swampy area, he nodded off. Went off the road and managed to miss EVERY SINGLE TREE. Came to rest gently against a boulder. Cops couldn’t figure it out. He wasn’t injured at all and the car was fine.
• He developed a lung ulcer from smoking dope crack or something like that. I had left him at this point to care for our toddler daughter, and I didn’t want to watch himself kill himself. He went to the hospital eventually. They gave him penicillin. Turns out he was allergic to penicillin. Doctors gave him a small chance of survival. So he called me and asked me to take him home to die. When I picked him up, his feet were literally the size of watermelons due to the allergic reaction. I bought him cigarettes on the way to his house. Yup, he survived.
• A while later he was welding in something like an elevator shaft. A huge piece of metal dropped down and hit him square on the head. It flung him out of the shaft and against a wall. He was knocked out, but eventually regained consciousness. He tried to go back to work, but his boss sent him home. He went back to work the next day. About a month later, the pain in his neck got to be annoying, so he went and got X-Rays. 3 vertebrae were shattered and he lost 3 inches of height. Walked around for a month with a broken back.
• At least once, almost overdosed on heroin. Said the thought of our daughter brought him out of it.

How he actually did die is the ironic part. He was on Methadone for the addiction problems and pain issues. He was fighting with his doctor about the dosage. He thought that the dosage was too high, from what I understand. He had a close call about a week before he did die.

He got his dose. Took the bus to my grandmother’s house (he did work around her house for her) Said he didn’t feel well. She let him lay down on her couch. That’s where he died….just went to sleep.

Another odd thing too. I wasn’t aware that Baptists go door to door. He was a Baptist. At the moment my grandmother found him, Baptists came to her door. She was freaking out, of course. One of them was an EMT, so they attempted to revive him.

All of this was 3 days before our daughter’s 12th birthday. I had taken the day out of work to prepare for her birthday. I’m a workaholic…so he was very considerate to wait until I had a day off?

He was a pain in the ass, but I miss the motherfucker.

19. F-You, Cancer

The death itself wasn’t all that funny, but my dad requested “I Don’t Need No Doctor” by Humble Pie be played at his funeral. He died of cancer.

20. He Wanted To Hike In The Front

We were hiking. I let my friend pass in front of me (we were 8 people, i was in the front, in line). After 30 seconds a single rock fell from above hitting him on the head. Instant kill. Head open. I was 16. I still have that horrible image on my mind. Then i ran with my sister to the starting point of the trail while our parents stayed with my friend, already dead. Only one rock fell, without warning. Made me believe in destiny.

21. Away Messages

In college, my friend would put an away message on AIM on NYE. “Score in 2004!” “Free in 2003!” He asked for suggestions for 2005. I IMed him and suggested “Alive in 2005.”

I found out the next day he had hanged himself.

22. Customer Appreciation

My dad was an alcoholic that lived in a small town and he died due to liver failure while on a massive bender. The death wasn’t unusual, but the funny part was that the biggest bouquet of flowers that were sent to the funeral were from the fucking liquor store.

23. One Way Or The Other

My mom tried to commit suicide unsuccessfully and the next day she died of heart disease totally unrelated.

24. Brain Surgeon With Brain Cancer

My aunt is a specialized brain surgeon and was recently diagnosed with a type of brain cancer that only she and one other person in the country (her best friend) is trained to operate on.

25. An Awkward Legacy At Best

Guy I played Rugby with in College accidentally killed him self David Carradine style. I was a few years removed from college and I moved back home so I was unable to attend the funeral, but I always wanted to know how awkward that whole thing would have been. We all worry about our internet history after we die, but to actually be at a funeral for a dude who died cranking one out with a belt around his neck pretty much cements your legacy.

26. “Never Could Get Him To Leave That Thing Alone”

Dear friend was an only child to older, Catholic parents who doted on him as a miracle birth. We worked in a restaurant together and he was known to be a bi-sexual, adventurous love machine.

He went of to college and was found hanging in his closet naked about 30 minutes after a seemingly normal conversation with his mother.

They were devastated at his apparent suicide. Their priest was immediately by their side trying to comfort them, but they could not make peace with their only son going straight to hell with no warning.

So, I was elected to tell them the truth.

He was jacking off with a noose for a greater thrill and it went all wrong.

Of course I worded it more carefully. The priest was there, his mother had been weeping for three days. I told her it was an accident, a thing the kids were trying as a sexual experiment, that’s why he was naked…

As she listened her eyes got bigger and bigger and suddenly she burst out laughing. “I never could get him to leave his thing alone!” she exclaimed.

And then she turned to the priest who shrugged his shoulders and offered her “Purgatory?”. And both his parents sighed a deep sigh of relief. That was when I found out you could pray a soul out of Purgatory.

Even his parents could not keep a straight face at the funeral. I think it was the relief of the truth.

27. Almost Made It

A distant relative was hit by a train when he thought he could jump across the tracks just before the train passed.

He made it. But then he tripped backwards…

28. Beating Cancer

My mother died in a car accident while going through chemo for stage 3 Lymphoma. We dealt with it with our dark sense of humor by saying, Mom found a way to beat cancer.

29. Thanks, Obama

My partner was talking to her grandfather about US politics. Normally, she wouldn’t engage him due to his differing views (namely, racism), but this time, he said that Obama was “a commie socialist.” She said, “I think actually most socialists wouldn’t agree with that; they probably would want him to be more left.” He opened his mouth to respond and then yawned and didn’t move. Turns out he’d died at that moment.

30. Paying Their Respects

My grandma died, so all of my family came to town to attend the funeral. On their way home from the service, my aunt and uncle died in a car crash.

31. Alcoholic Killed By Drunk Driver

I’m not sure if this is truly ironic but my aunt died a few years ago in an unexpected but fitting way. She was a long-time alcoholic with liver disease to the point to where she was given a 6 month expiration date. It was going to be a slow, painful death and none of us were happy about watching her kill herself with alcohol.

Shortly after receiving this diagnosis, she died instantly in a drunk driving accident. She was the passenger, my cousin was driving drunk.

32. Killed By The Deer She Was Protecting

I had an aunt who was a chapter president of the League of Humane Voters, an anti-hunting group. One of their opponent groups arguments was “if we don’t allow hunters to kill deer, the deer population will increase and create traffic accidents.”

She was killed when a car on the opposite side of a divided highway struck a deer, and the deer’s carcass went flying through the air, across the highway, and through the windshield of the car in which she was a passenger.

Knowing the highway (people drive 70-80), she was killed over a hundred pounds of venison that struck her at 140 mph. Instant death.

The driver of the car was entirely unharmed. Not a scratch.

Nobody really talked about the fact that she was killed by the very thing that hunters said would happen. It was just “a car accident.” But her husband silently dropped out of the group soon thereafter.