Sarah Silverman: Postmortem [Media Notes 161]

Jason Zinoman, in the NYTimes (May 25, 2025):

“Death is really hard for me,” Sarah Silverman says with the kind of impeccably performed earnestness that makes you believe her banal statement for just long enough to be sideswiped by the punchline. “And that’s what makes me unique.” What actually makes Silverman different is that few others would handle the death of a father and stepmother in the same month by joking merrily about merch. “I really feel like my parents would want me to monetize this,” she says.

No amount of tragedy is going to turn Silverman into a maudlin solo artist. Her funniest jokes employ sarcasm, not sincerity.

That’s a reasonable characterization of the special. It’s worth watching. I enjoyed it. And of course I thought of the deaths of my own parents.

Very different. 

Silverman’s parents died nine days apart. My father died several years before my mother. He died of complications (sepsis) following surgery to remove his bladder (cancer). His surgeon thought he could save his life by removing his colon, but my father did not want the reduced quality of life. He’d signed a DNR (do not resuscitate), but my sister and I had to make the final authorization as my mother had Alzheimer’s. I’ve said more about his death in this post. 

That was 1998 when he was 86. My mother died in 2001 at the age of 85. 

Since she could no longer take care of herself after my father died, my sister and I had to make various arrangements for her. At first we arranged for a companion to stay with her in her home, where, my sister observed, she now slept on her husband’s side of the bed. But it was too exhausting for the companion – my sister and I were unable to make arrangements to relieve her often enough – and so we had to put her in some kind of home. My sister eventually found the Mary Drexel Home outside of Philadelphia, which was excellent.* One day she fell into a coma and didn’t wake up. My sister and I stayed with her until the end. Or at least, I assume, my sister did. I was tired and went down the hall to sleep, not very comfortably, on a small not-quite-sofa in a waiting room. 

* * * * *

*This post is about one Thanksgiving day at the Mary Drexel Home.