It's too late to rescue the man from the gator, but the fight to rescue his memory from the punchline goes on.

"Tommie Woodward yelled, 'Fuck that gator!' just before he was killed by one in Texas, and his death instantly became a national joke. For his family, grieving means having to rescue the person from the punchline."

Family, you are just reminding me of a punchline I had already forgotten. I had no memory anymore of your foolish son either.

The linked article — at Buzzfeed — is really long. I scrolled all the way down for you and snagged the last 2 paragraphs, which suggest why Buzzfeed decided to dive this deep:

Back at Burkart’s Marina, standing on the pier, near where his brother spent his final moments, Brian shares how a combination of fatalism and faith help him mourn. “Losing somebody ain’t easy, but what’s done is done,” he says. “Ain’t nothing I can do about it, can’t take it back.” He takes a deep breath. “Tommie just got to go home. I look forward to the day I get to go. One day I will get to see my brother again.”

For now, he will settle for the nights when he sees Tommie in his dreams. It doesn’t happen often, and there’s no hidden meaning, nothing to analyze. What Brian sees in his dreams and what it means is pretty overt. The same scenario plays out each time. Once Tommie appears, Brian stops whatever he’s doing. He then looks at his brother, smiles, and says, “Man, it’s good to see ya.”

There's a yearning for family and religion, and, sometimes, when you can't get it, you can nevertheless get some warmth from an ironic distance.