The Joke You’ll Never Hear Again

(A eulogy for the inside jokes that died with them)

There’s a moment in every funeral where the world goes quiet. Where everyone bows their heads. Where the pastor or the cousin or the best friend tries to summarize a whole human life in three polite anecdotes and a Bible verse.

They say shit like “He always had a great laugh” or “She lit up the room” or “They never met a stranger.”
And you nod.
Because it’s what you’re supposed to do.
But the truth is, they’re not talking about your person.
They’re talking about their version of your person. The safe one. The softened one. The one that can be wrapped in polite bows and sent off with casseroles.

But you?
You remember the joke.

You know the one.

The one you made together.
The one that was stupid as hell and never worked on anyone else.
The one that made you double over laughing in the middle of a Walgreens or a waiting room or a hospital hallway.
The one that only existed in that strange psychic frequency the two of you shared.

And now?

Now that frequency is gone.

Grief isn’t just the empty seat at the table.
It’s the silence where the punchline used to land.

It’s reaching for your phone to text the dumb thing that just happened, only to remember that nobody’s on the other end anymore.

It’s hearing someone quote a movie out of context and realizing that you were the only one who would’ve laughed.

It’s the joke you’ll never hear again.

Nobody tells you this part.
They warn you about the sadness.
They prepare you for the tears.
They walk you through the “five stages” like it’s a fucking video game and you just need to level up into Acceptance.

But nobody prepares you for the death of your shared language.

Nobody warns you that, sometimes, the thing you’ll miss the most isn’t their hug or their advice or their smell—it’s the way they said that one thing in that one voice with that one smirk.

And it’s gone.

You’ll try to explain it to people.
You’ll do the voice. The impression.
You’ll try to recreate the moment, like a necromancer doing stand-up.
And they’ll laugh politely.
But they won’t get it.
Because they weren’t there.

And you’ll stop trying.

Not out of sadness. But out of reverence.

Because some things aren’t meant to be translated.
Some jokes die with the person who made them.
And maybe that’s okay.

So here’s to the punchlines that died in hospital rooms.
Here’s to the voices we still hear in our heads when something dumb happens.
Here’s to the catchphrases, the callbacks, the comedy routines that only two people in the world ever knew.

You were funnier than the world knew.
And you’re still with me.
Every time I almost laugh.
Every time I whisper the line under my breath.
Every time I smirk at something no one else gets.

The joke may be gone.
But I’m still laughing.
Quietly.
For both of us.