A vet pranked his entire family at his own funeral

Members of the military and veterans the world over have a dark sense of humor. Given the nature of our lives, we can either think about the gravest consequences of what we do or we can choose to laugh about it. We spend so much time joking about dark things, it bleeds into the rest of our lives. For one Irish veteran, it carried on into his death.

Shay Bradley died on Oct. 8, 2019, of a long illness, one "bravely borne" in Dublin, Ireland. Bradley was a veteran of the Irish Defense Forces, the all-volunteer military forces of the Republic of Ireland. He was laid to rest just four days later in a beautiful funeral that would have been at the same time solemn and sad. That's when someone started knocking on the casket door.

From the inside.

"Hello? Hello. Hello? Let me out!" the funeralgoers heard. ""Where the f*ck am I? … Let me out, it's f*cking dark in here. … Is that the priest I can hear? … This is Shay, I'm in the box. No, in f*cking front of you. I'm dead."

Bradley wanted his wife to leave the funeral laughing instead of crying. According to his daughter Andrea, Shay recorded the audio about a year before his passing, knowing full well how his illness would end. No one knew about the recording that would be played at the funeral except Shay's son Jonathan and his grandson, Ben. Jonathan let the cat out of the bag two days before the funeral, though, telling the immediate family about the recording.

It was Shay's dying wish to play the prank at his own funeral. His wife was laughing as she left the cemetery, just as Shay had hoped.

"[It was his] way of saying not only goodbye, but to also say, 'OK the sadness is over now here is a laugh so you can go and celebrate my life with a smile on your face.'"Bradley's daughter told the Huffington Post. "This prank was one in a million, just like my dad."