Laughter is Good Medicine

It's good to laugh. It releases endorphins that enhance your mood in a positive way. And through all this, we have laughed.

The minister who will conduct Mom's service knew both my parents and we were musing about how long she had been a widow. "She never remarried?" he said. So I told him the true story of the old widowers at the church who tried to court Mom after dad died. And how she gently but firmly declined their advances. She told me once, that she would never find another man who would put up with her like my dad, and then added, with a twinkle in her eye, that if she got hooked up with some old geezer and he ticked her off, she'd hate to have to shoot him. Now that is the God's honest, truth so no wonder my support group friends describe her as feisty!

And we enjoyed another joke today. When everyone was here cleaning and neatening on Saturday they discovered a giant economy-sized box of oatmeal was "leaking" flakes of oats. When I took it out of the bag, I discovered this but I put it on the shelf intending to transfer it to the one I had almost emptied (I'm trying to lower my cholesterol before I get blood work done). The crew -- I had gone on a work-related errand -- decided to toss it, not realizing I had just brought it home from the store. So I looked in vain for it on Sunday and finally called Ed to see if he knew what happened to it. He was working outside but shouted an explanation to his wife who relayed it to me and we made a joke of it.

I confess that the more I told it, the funnier it seemed. People come over and tell you they are going to help you straighten things up and they throw out your oatmeal. So I shared it with my cousins who came to visit today and one brought me oatmeal when she returned later in the day to visit with another cousin who was coming. When Ed came over tonight, he brought a box, too, saying his wife told him he better replace it since he's the one who threw it out. So we have all laughed about the oatmeal today and it will no doubt become a family story that we share as the years go by.

Not everything that's going on is funny but we haven't lost our sense of humor. It's part of what makes us human. And Mom would have laughed with us if she could.