I love to laugh. I always have. It is so much a part of my day that I need a good belly laugh just as I need coffee, every single day. It has become my own personal ‘canary in a coal mine’. When I don’t laugh, something is wrong in my life.
After my son died, I didn’t laugh. I didn’t notice, it was one more thing that had died inside of me. This new me swung between searing pain and numbness. I was surprised that it didn’t kill me, then I wished that it would. I started thinking about dying every day. I prayed for it every night and begged for it every morning. This went on for well over a year.
Being a single mom and living in a mobile home working full time and barely paying all of my bills, I found myself sitting in my chair crying and thinking of ways to end my life. I was looking at my ceiling fan and thinking of hanging myself from it. Given my luck, I imagined that if I did, the fan would probably pull out of the ceiling, I would have a scar on my neck from the rope burn (everyone would know I tried), I would have a hole in my ceiling that I couldn’t afford to fix so I would have to drape a big blue tarp over it and look like trash! For some reason, this struck me as funny and I started laughing. I laughed so hard that tears ran down my face, it probably became a bit manic, but when I realized I was laughing, I suddenly knew that I wasn’t going to die.
My dad and I have always had a “poking fun” at each other relationship. Sometimes it stings, sometimes we are in hysterics. Now that I am caring for my elderly dad, laughing has become our barometer for how things are going. Some situations have been so sad and tragic that we find ourselves laughing at them, only to reassure each other that all hope is not lost. Some of the most absurd events we have been through, have been easier to accept if we can joke about it and laugh. I have posted some incidents, making fun of them, sometimes with tears in my eyes. Some have found them offensive, I still have a relation who does not speak to me, who doesn’t visit my dad, but is offended enough to cut me out. They don’t understand! Sometimes life becomes so incredibly hard and serious. It starts to break you. The word disaster comes from the words Astros (stars) and dis (without), so a “disaster” means to be without stars, or without light. When life gets too dark, sometimes you need to bring the light with you into it. That’s what laughter is to me. The things that we lose when disaster strikes are the Joy, the Hope, the Light. To me, if I am still laughing, I can make it through. I will swallow down my fear and step into the dark laughing. Laughter doesn’t fix anything. There are plenty of times that I can’t laugh, but I have learned that it can help shine a little light in the dark corners of my fears and it shows me that I am still alive.
learning to let go 2016 