In the wake of his father’s recent death, Ryan Reynolds revealed comedy has helped him get through this difficult time.

“In my dad’s dying moments, we were making him laugh. We were all in there together, me and my brothers, just joking with him,” the 39-year-old actor said in a new interview with Men’s Health. “And of course we end up busting each other’s chops. I recommended that the doctor raise dad’s dose of Dilaudid in order to make my other brother more tolerable.”

Ryan’s dad, James Reynolds, died in late October 2015 at age 74 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. “It wasn’t a bad way to go. If I could have the same death as my father, I would do it right now,” he admitted.

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The actor also confessed filming his new movie Deadpool — in which Ryan plays a superhero with a dark and twisted sense of humor — helped him cope with his father’s passing. “I understand the idea of filtering pain through a prism of comedy. I think this character does that quite well,” he said of portraying Deadpool.

ryan reynolds and blake lively

Ryan and his wife, Blake, in May 2014.

“He obviously takes it too far. He wakes up in the morning exclusively to annoy everyone around him. But for your average civilian like me, I think there’s something really relatable about that idea, that there’s something to be learned by taking life a little less seriously,” Ryan continued.

Ryan and his wife, actress Blake Lively, 28 — who married in September 2012 — recently welcomed their first child, daughter James, whom they named after Ryan’s father.