KEEP ME LAUGHING

Seven years ago, on Halloween, my husband finally succumbed to the cancer that had taken over his body. He had talked of feeling his body had been taken over by an alien inside that he couldn’t get out. I insisted that Hospice put his bed in the living room so that friends and relatives would have easier access to visit him and say their goodbyes. Many kind people asked me what they could do to help. I learned that there is little anyone can do to help. Death comes when it chooses. People who visit try to do something about their own sense of helplessness. Many gestures are as ineffective as those of people who insist on ‘helping’ with the dishes, piling them everywhere on the kitchen counter, creating more chaos than help to the hostess.

Nevertheless, I recognized that others were also feeling helpless. I needed to be doing as much as I could to attend to my fading husband so I suggested to those offering that the best thing they could do for me was to keep me laughing. Since my computer has been my link to friends all over the world, I was soon inundated by jokes. At one time my mail folder for them had piled to 5000 unread items. I learned there were some who, despite my protests, insisted on passing along mushy, irritating, spiritual prayers of hope which I only found annoying, not amusing. Death is inevitable and neither he nor I believed in an afterlife. I’ve always believed that no benevolent God would ever put me in a Heaven with BOTH my husbands.

It didn’t take me a long time to figure out which of my friends understood a good belly laugh from an unfunny post. I made two folders into which my email program filtered them. One was for those who sent really clever, funny stuff, puns, surprise endings, lists that keep one laughing longer, cartoons, and those not circulated with Fwd: (several times in the subject). I appreciated those who learned to BCC: so that I didn’t have to see pages of email addresses of those who preceded me in the reading. These were not passing out my address as well.

To this day, I still get many good laughs everyday, whenever I choose to open these folders and take a few minutes to read. When I have a bit of free time I forward them on to others who, I think, will lighten up for a few moments, as well. I do not keep a “joke list” because not everyone finds all jokes appropriate or funny. Instead, I check my lists of friends and family and single out those who might, to my mind, appreciate this single one. I refuse to forward to: “*** Forward this to at least 11 people and see what comes on your screen, you will laugh your head off!!!!!!! This works. I don't know how...” Of course, you don’t know how, because it doesn’t and can’t work. Despite the glitches, my friends have kept me laughing and I am grateful to all of them for it.