QotD: No Laughing Matter

What do you think is too serious to joke around about?

As most of you know, I was involved for 4 months in the Swissair Flight 111 disaster that occurred here on September 2, 1998.  Bound for Geneva, Switzerland....but crashed (at 24 G-Force......long story to explain that) in sight of our coastline instead.  Many people saw the airliner before it went down, but thank goodness, no one actually saw the crash.  It hit and was under water in less than one second.  It set off an earthquake indicator.  This was an MD-11, used now as a passenger airliner only in Asia and as a UPS (or Fed-Ex...I can't remember which one) cargo plane in the US.  They are no longer built.

There is such a thing as "death humor".  When you see so much of it...as with the police, paramedics, hospital personnel, firemen, all emergency workers, coroner personnel, etc.....it becomes a defense mechanism.  It may seem unfeeling and macabre to the outsider, but it is a form of mentally protecting oneself from so much death....to distance oneself and survive to continue on...to be able to perform your duties on down the years for many people.  And death will be involved in a lot of situations.

But when you come upon a catastrophe.....a sudden violent event, manmade or otherwise, that brings about great loss or destruction:  THAT is the time when it is too serious to make jokes, even the usual death jokes.  The situation is too overwhelming, the loss and horror too numbing, the rescue (if any) and recovery too unnerving and staggering to even have any other thoughts in your mind.  Even years later, jokes are not appropriate or even thought of.

September 11, 2001 would be another situation equivalent to Swissair Flight 111 in September of 1998.  Celine Dion's song would also apply to the Towers disaster, too.  All the loved ones left behind.

Swissair Flight 111: Sept. 2, 1998

This is the actual Swissair jumbo jet (a "heavy") that would have the designation of Swissair Flight 111 on September 2, 1998.  This photo, not taken by me, was captured in August, 1998....days before it no longer existed.  Beautiful airplane.  Beautiful people.

Sight Through A Swissair Window

This is not Swissair Flight 111, but it is a Swissair jumbo jet.  You can see their logo on the flap at the very end of the wing, and I thought it appropriate that the photo was taken while flying over a body of water.  I remember touching some of these windows and part of an engine from the larger bits of wreckage from the crash of Flight 111.

Swissair Flight 111 Memorial At Sunset

This is the memorial site in Peggy's Cove (Nova Scotia, Canada), in honor of all 259 people who died in these waters the Atlantic Ocean) on September 2, 1998 enroute to Geneva, Switzerland.

After the crash of Swissair Flight 111, I have always associated this song by Celine Dion with the loved ones and family members who came here to Nova Scotia, Canada immediately following the disaster.  The song is, of course, from the movie "Titanic" (another tragedy involving Nova Scotia, Canada)....but the loved ones' faces and emotions for the victims on Swissair Flight 111 will never leave me.  It could never be captured by a camera.  And this song makes me cry for the ones left behind whenever I hear it.  The horror and sadness of what they experienced when they arrived here.  I stayed involved with the disaster for about 4 months and then I had to pull out because it was becoming my whole life...and that is not gentle on your mental health.  As the father of a physicist, Perrs Span, told me with a clip on pin (as he did not speak English and his daughter-in-law translated for me): Remember.