Healing With Laughter

AFTER LOSING HER PARENTS NINE DAYS APART, THE COMEDIAN CHANNELED HER GRIEF INTO A NEW NETFLIX STAND-UP SPECIAL. SHE OPENS UP ABOUT THE 'CATHARTIC' EXPERIENCE— AND HOW SHE FOUND NEW LOVE

- By COLLEEN KRATOFIL

Comedy Connection Silverman felt a close bond with the Postmortem audience.

Comedy Connection Silverman felt a close bond with the Postmortem audience. Unlike her three sisters, Sarah Silverman hasn't seen signs from her late parents or stepparents, but she has her own ways of keeping them close. “I always email them,” she says. “When you have something to brag about, your parents are the only people in the world that love it. It’s sustenance for them. It makes them so happy. I’ll send some sort of braggy thing like, ‘Guess who I met?’”

The Emmy-winning comedian, known for her stand-up routines where no controversial topic is off-limits, is in a reflective state during a Zoom interview from her home in Los Angeles. “Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of my dad dying. It was such a horrible, beautiful, interesting time that kind of left us all just completely depleted and then kind of full again,” says Silverman, 54. Her father, Donald, who owned a discount women’s clothing store, died of kidney failure just nine days after her stepmother, Janice, died of pancreatic cancer. Donald opted against hospital treatment to live out his final moments at home. “He could have probably fought and lived alittle longer,” says Silverman. “He wanted to be with Janice.”