A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, anymore than a good mortician wants to finish his job and then have the patient sit up on the table.

Kerr’s joke hinges on professional incentives: some occupations are most “at ease” when the situation fully requires their specialized services. A “friendly divorce” implies minimal conflict, fewer billable hours, and less need for adversarial lawyering—so the lawyer, like the mortician, is humorously cast as uneasy when the expected drama (or finality) fails to materialize. The mortician comparison pushes the idea to absurdity: if the “patient” sits up, the job is not only unfinished but conceptually undermined. The quip satirizes how systems built around conflict or crisis can feel misaligned with reconciliation, even when reconciliation is best for the people involved.