I noticed at the start of your special -- this is kind of morose -- that you were wearing black. It kind of symbolized death itself as you gave this very funny [eulogy].

Laurie Kilmartin: I kind of wanted it to look funereal I guess. And I wanted it to be dark looking. It was a black background and I was head to toe in black. I sort of wanted to be a yellow head buried in blackness. That was my goal on that.

Was it your decision to start the special off with a 20 minute documentary?

Laurie Kilmartin: No! That was the idea of Frank and the production team from Angry Buddha. I did the standup; I taped it myself. Then I was trying to figure out what to do with it and they said “Why don’t you add stuff to it? Add context to it. Let people know how you started down this path of talking and joking about it?” I was hesitant because I couldn't visualize it but they actually could. And they did it. And they executed it. It was such a huge addition. I’m so glad they did!

When you first sat down to discuss the death and the process, did you find it easy to do so like you did on stage?

Laurie Kilmartin: No, it was so -- When I was on stage, it was seven months after my dad died and the documentary was almost two years. It just felt so different. I felt that I’d processed it a lot and it felt so...My mouth wasn’t trembling when I was [recounting]. You know what I mean? I felt like I had come to terms with it. When I was doing the standup, it was pretty new. I realize when I look back. I still struggled with sometimes telling jokes. Now I can talk about it on stage and it’s no big deal.

Andy Kindler likened it to a memoir. Conan [O’Brien] said it was brutally honest. I saw it as very lethargic for you to get up there. Like a weight got off your shoulders, even though you still carried this burden with you. Do you ever see yourself putting those jokes into book form and just writing out everything your dad did for you and your family?

Laurie Kilmartin: I’m actually writing a book about grief. I actually had a lot of stuff that didn’t make the special; stuff that works better in print than on stage. For a nightclub situation, jokes have to be really short. My stuff is a little bit longer. So I am kind of working on stuff like that now.

It felt kind of reminiscent of what Tig Notaro was going through when she was sick. Through the pain, she was shopping all of her jokes. Did it help you alleviate any personal issues that you had with the death coming so rapidly?

Laurie Kilmartin: I’m sure it did. It’s hard to exactly track what made you feel better. But that’s how I process all of my emotions -- trying to write jokes. It definitely helps. If you’re a knitter, you’re compulsively making sweaters. It sort of helps, for me, to have some sort of goal -- you know -- to turn this crazy situation into a joke.