Finding Humor at the Worst of Times

Laughter doesn’t need to be sacrificed when life gets hard.

I love a good laugh and anybody who makes me laugh is my friend (whether they know it or not). But I don’t laugh easily — I can’t watch stupid comedy movies and laugh out loud — much to my husband’s annoyance. I appreciate more of a dry, British sense of humor (along with a bit of a dirty sense of humor thanks to my mother who is elegant and put-together but can laugh so hard at a dirty joke she pees her pants).

One of the main reasons I married my husband was because he made me laugh. We both agree that laughing has got to be one of the most important aspects of living a good life.

It’s no surprise, then, that when we had kids, they, too, would have healthy senses of humor.

But life is sometimes hard. Really hard at times. My daughter was chronically ill with a brain tumor for most of her life. She went through many treatments and hospital stays, experienced more side effects from treatments than I could count, and her little body suffered. More than I like to think about.

From the outside, I’m sure there was nothing funny about our lives. Beyond the scary medical prognoses she faced, Emily was weak on one side — unable to use her right arm and walked with an uneven gait. She lost her short-term memory along with some cognitive abilities when she was just a child.

But you know what she didn’t lose? Her personality. Particularly her wicked sense of humor.

We were still able to find humor in what life threw at us, my daughter especially. Perhaps it was her ability to laugh, and make us laugh, that made getting through the hard parts of life so bearable.

We laughed when Emily pretended to be a grandma as she slowly, carefully, bent over to get something from the floor. Her body did not work well and she played it up, a smile on her face, saying, “Oh my aching back!” in a shaky, old lady voice.

Emily laughed, complete with an eye roll when her dad teased her about kissing boys.

We laughed when I asked her what she would like for lunch and she replied, “Chocolate.” No, seriously Em, I would plead. And she’d respond, “I am serious. Chocolate. All the chocolate.”

We laughed when she teased her brother relentlessly. We also laughed when her brother gave it back to her — she could take it.

We laughed at her literal, unabashed, junk food loving mind. Like the time our friend asked Emily what her favorite restaurant was and Emily replied, “McDonald’s.” Our friend followed up with, “No, I mean your favorite place to eat that’s nicer than McDonald’s.” Without missing a beat Emily replied, “Wendy’s.”

Emily’s strong sense of humor meant she would break out in laughter anytime I attempted the hula dance, ran to the bathroom screaming Get out of my way! because I was about to wet my pants, or when my son popped out of nowhere and scared the bejesus out of me.

Emily laughed easily and sometimes, if we were lucky, the belly laughs would start. One eye would close, her head would tilt back, her face scrunched up like she was about to cry, and she would clutch her hand to her heart as the biggest belly laugh erupted from her mouth. The giggles and laughter would last for a minimum of five straight minutes. And we couldn’t help but laugh as well, complete with tears streaming down our faces. Most of the time we didn’t even know what we were laughing at (but it was the most amazing five minutes).

She could even laugh at the little things on the days she was lying in a hospital bed, IVs hooked up to her arms and legs, doctors unsure of the next treatment path.

Emily’s ability to laugh during her hard times made it easier for us to laugh and find humor during our hard times.

We laughed when we drove two hours to the beach and Emily asked, literally every three minutes due to her compromised memory, “How much longer?”

We laughed when Emily, completely ticked about having to go to the doctor’s office for the third time that week, told the doctor as he walked in the exam room, “I’m fine,” then turned to me and said, “We can go home now.”

We laughed when I said, “The only thing I have going on today is a meeting at 1 pm, should be an easy day,” and then the school called saying that Emily was having a bad day and needed to be picked up.

There was a time that I felt guilty about laughing during these situations. After all, there’s nothing funny about her illness or prognosis. But the alternative was to get upset and scream at the universe. You can only do that so many times before realizing that the only thing it does is give you a sore throat (a lesson I learned). Laughing, at least, seemed to accomplish something. It grounded us to who we were — Emily and the rest of my family. We enjoyed a good laugh. It felt a hell of a lot better than wallowing.

During these times that were wildly out of our control, we were appreciative of our senses of humor. All of ours, Emily’s especially.

We had a life full of joy, among the heartache, and will continue to do so, complete with laughter.