Why do we laugh at and euphemize about death?

Freud's Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious 
 

     The technique of jokes operates in a manner similar to the technique of the Dream-Work. Jokes employ the methods of condensation, displacement, allusion, substitution of a trivial idea for an important one; but, unlike dreams, jokes perform a social function, they require an audience. The source of all jokes, humor, wit and comedy is man's repressed instinctual nature, especially the instincts of sex and aggression. In civilization, these emotions (and all their variations) can seldom be expressed directly. But they are permitted entry into consciousness in the distorted form of jokes and humor, Whose True Unconscious Meaning is understood by all. Jokes allow a momentary suspension of the repressions which bind the emotions of forbidden sexuality and aggression, a discharge of the energy of the counter-cathexis which maintains the repressions, and the feeling of pleasure which accompanies this discharge.
     A joke like a dream can be psychoanalyzed into its unconscious components; but then, of course, it is no longer a joke, a source of pleasure and discharge of repressed psychic energy, but rather another instance of how the systems Pcs. (Pre-conscious) - Ucs. (Unconscious) produce compromise-formations which momentarily lift the repressions guarding consciously forbidden material and at the same time disguise this forbidden material so that it becomes acceptable to consciousness.
     Humor also acts as a defense-mechanism against unpleasure. It allows us to discharge energy that would normally deal directly with the source of unpleasure itself, energy supporting the repression of forbidden impulses Plus the disguised forbidden impulses themselves. This process thus becomes a source of doubly heightened pleasure. As is the case with so many forms of adult behavior, jokes "take us back to the state of childhood." Jokes are the adult version of the child's fondness for playing with words as if they were things, real objects. The mastery of language itself produces pleasure. (The colloquial phrase "play on words" suggests the intimate connection between words and pleasure.)
     We know how severely repressed the instincts of sexuality and aggression are in civilized men. Jokes rank high among the Substitute-Gratifications which civilization permits, allowing us to momentarily overcome these repressions and experience, in verbal fantasy, uninhibited sexual-aggressive pleasure of a kind that would never be permitted in reality.

You're going to die.
        Sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings, but it's true. No matter how fast you run, how high you climb, no matter how rich or powerful you are, no matter if you're encrusted with honors as a pier with mussels, no matter how much of the acedemic alphabet you can string behind your name, you're going to cark it. Kick the bubket. Shuffle off this mortal coil.
        Before this preface borrows too heavily from the dead parrot sketch, you may want to know what your death, inevitable if not imminent, has to do with a collection of jokes. The answer is: absolutly everything. Laughter is a life and death issue. 
        These days, a average persons life span amounts to around 650 000 hours. Well, in 650 000 billion years you'll still be dead. And those billions will be just the beggining of your death sentence, but a fleeting moment in great dollops of eternity. 
        If we didnt die, if we didn't have to face that endless vista of non-existance, we wouldn't have, woundn't need, a sense of humor. The issues simply wouldn't arise. 
        Humans are dignified by doom, defined by an awareness of mortality. As far as we know, no other creature has this essential tragic awareness. Even those who assuage anxieties by believing in God are confronted by the fact that He's the cosmic comic who, in the greatest of all practical jokes, has provided us with a slapstick fate. Where a handful are condemned to the chair, the gallows, the gas chamber, the garotte or the fatal injection, God has condemned the entire six billion of us to the hospital, the hospice, the car accident, the plane crash, the stroke.
        And not just us human beings but every living creature. And not just every living creature, but everything that exists. In a catch that makes Catch 22 look reasonable, His Majesty has cursed the entire universe with the second law of Thermodynamics, which means that the whole shebang comes to a grinding halt. Shades of those lights are going out all over Europe; the suns, the countless billions of them, will go out all over space-time. And it's not just the solar systems and the galaxies that will be extinguished - it's ditto for the miniscule subatomic particles that cavort in the realms of quantum mechanics.
        The end. Finito. Kaput. Facing this awesome and unpleasant fact, human beings, despite the optimism energetically marketed by a plethora of faiths, have every reason to feel just a little depressed. Either that, or an almost orgasmic terror that thrills and chills every atom of our being. So much so that we cry out in rage, in horror, in despair.
        Or we laugh.
        Laughter is the other way of reacting to the raw deal of our brief existance. Whilst closely related to screaming, it is less shrill and more congenial. And it seems to produce in humans some as-yet undiscovered enzyme that dulls pain and gives a feeling of pleasurable acquiscence. Scientists studying tears of sorrow have recently detected a chemical that cannot be found in tears of joy - it seems that simply by weeping we produce infitesimal amounts of an internal narcotic that hits receptors in the brain and, in turn, dulls our pain. 
        The editors of this compitlation are convinced that a similar narcotic is produced by laughter, that millions of years of evolution have provided this method of mollifying the meloncholia and collective martyrdom - of out inescapable mortalitly

Another infamous method for humans to confront uncomfortable issues is euphemism, the substitution of a more comfortable phrase for the taboo/tacit one.  So here's a list, a page torn out of thesaurus (courtesy Monty Python) for you aspiring dime store murder novel writers.  Not recommended for doctors. The book R.I.P. suggests even more euphemisms, from categories including theater (curtain call), gambling (cashing in his chips), the sea (Davy Jone's locker), suicide (the rope cure), movement (to meet his maker), and humor (taking the big dirt nap). 
 

kicked the bucket karked it cactus snuffed it curled up his toes a stiff stuffed faded away bereft of life gone to a better place resting

gone on to his reward passed on before us worms meat pushing up daises kicked the bucket had his lot vis a vis the metabolic processes shuffled off this mortal coil had his lot passed on is no more has run down the curtain to join the choir invisible

ex-human deceased expired his lot has ceased to be stone dead dead as a dodo kaput prolonged sleep rests in peace gone to meet his maker

Humorous takes on Death 

There has been a lot of humor produced about death, short jokes, long jokes, parodies and satires. Here's some that we found, and you can add or link to your own.

These next few jokes are from this page.

Mother-in-law on the phone: "I've decided I want to be cremated."
Daughter-in-law: "Great, get your coat on, and I'll be right over."
—AOL Seniornet

". . . And to my wife who loved my cheery smile, I leave my dentures."
—cartoon quip

A clergyman awoke one morning to find a dead donkey in his front yard. He had no idea how it got there, but he knew he had to get rid of it. So, he called the sanitation department, the health department, and several other agencies, but no one seemed able to help him. In desperation, the good reverend called the mayor and asked what should be done. The mayor must have been having a bad day. "Why bother me?" he asked. "You're a clergyman. It's your job to bury the dead." The pastor lost his cool. "Yes," he snapped, "But I thought I should at least notify the next-of-kin."
—from the AOL Seniornet Jokes folder

Here lyeth the body of Martha Dias— Always noisy, not very pious. She lived to the age of three score and ten And gave to worms what she refused to men.
—E-mail to FAMSA, from a retired funeral director

This page has some funny death-related stuff from P.J. O'Rourke.

-From Ran across the web page, contributed by Kushal Dave

1.3 I just wanna die. What's the most painless and easy way? No-one knows.! If someone kills themselves, and it was painless, we can hardly ask can we? It's doubtful wether people video themselves in the act for others to view either. And if someone fails in a suicide bid, then chances are they will experience pain (be it physical or mental) afterwards.

-From a.s.h. FAQ, contributed by