Tending to Endings (twenty)
This post will not be funny. This will not be funny because like many of you, I have been living in relative seclusion for I-lost-count-of-how-many days and I have learned things about myself. For instance, I have learned that I am relatively disciplined when it comes to writing and moderate exercise and cleaning the kitchen every day. But regarding laughter and playfulness and lightheartedness? For that, I apparently require the village.
I have even found myself envying friends who are quarantining with kids. Yes, they have to figure out how to attend video work meetings while simultaneously homeschooling and keeping an infant alive. But there is a chance that in the middle of an endless day when things feel heavy and uncertain, a couple toddlers will show up in a viking cap and ski goggles.
Once my kids got older and moved out, it was often my co-workers who helped save me from myself on a regular basis by making me laugh. People often say the favorite thing about their work are the people, and it was certainly true for me. During some of the most stressful weeks of the semester, faculty would pull out an art project or make crepes in the kitchen or launch a game of Telephone Pictionary.
My friends at the college still help give me perspective. Because, while I can’t force funny, I can put myself in a place where it is more likely to happen. For instance, anywhere in the vicinity of my friend Maia who has a talent for being hilarious. While I’m complaining about the clunkiness of relation-shipping on Zoom, Maia is busy amusing herself, her math students, and an ever growing audience of Facebook followers with her daily Zoom wardrobe and scene changes.
My mom was funny. In fact, her sense of humor was one of the things that got me through during those difficult times towards the end of her life. I remember a moment when we were first bringing in hospice care and we were participating in the intake interview which basically meant that our nurse, Noelle would ask questions, and my mom would look to my dad and I to answer. Alzheimer’s had made even simple questions difficult.
At one point during the visit my Noelle asked how long my parents had been married and my dad answered they had been happily married for fifty-four years.
“Hasn’t it been fifty-five?” I asked.
“Well, fifty-four of them were happy,” my mom interjected. “There was that one.”
That moment helped Noelle get to know my mom more than any of her other questions, and they became quick friends.
One of the greatest gifts of spending six months living with my parents was discovering that they were truly in love. I could tell because they could still make each other laugh and they did so often and for their own amusement. They sang old drinking songs from college and had a patter with each other that was improvisational yet familiar.
One evening my parents and I were on the lanai watching the sun put on a particularly spectacular show, turning the ocean and sky bright gold.
“This is heaven,” mom said.
Which I took as an opportunity for a serious conversation. My mom was approaching the end of her life, after all, and it was difficult to discuss death especially with the confusion of her disease.
“What do you think heaven is like, really?” I asked.
And she looked at me and my father and spread her hands open to the sky and said, “Like this.”
Never one to let go of a goal easily, and also, because I was curious, I asked, “What about people who died before you like your mom? Do you think you see them?”
She looked at me, nodded,”Yes, I think so.”
“What about people you didn’t like very much?” my dad teased.
Well, they are there, but you don’t have to talk to them.” Her half-smile let me know she knew she was funny.
These moments were gifts not only because they made me laugh, but also because they told me my mom was still herself.
Tuesday my friend Patty and I went for our weekly walk which her husband calls our anti-social walk now that we keep space between us (even my friend’s spouses are funny). This time we decide to hit the trails and on the way up it starts to drizzle. I explain how I planned this whole blog about humor and playfulness. I thought I would be great fun to play all week as research, but then I couldn’t even think of anything fun to do, which was really depressing.
Patty laughed, which was exactly the right response, and I continued to describe my angst about not being able to lighten up enough to write about lightening up. Loudly because we were antisocial distance walking and all. Plus, the rain was getting stronger.
And as we reached the top of the ridge, and I could see the mountains in the distance, I noticed a peculiar green tint to the clouds that I hadn’t seen earlier and not very often at all in Boise. Then the skies opened up and just dumped on us.
We stood there a minute at the top of the ridge stunned by rain and its intensity. Even the the mountain bikers seemed impressed straddling their bikes on a knoll above us and staring upward as the sky let loose.
Then lightening flashed and brightened whole sky and Patty said, “Whoa,” and we began our way down. I counted in my my head like I did as a child during midwestern summer storms. One one-thousand, two and then the thunder cracked and Patty and I quickened our pace to a brisk walk-jog, rain pelting down drenching our clothes and our selves, both of us laughing.
Yes, I thought, like this.
More Resources
In case you, too, need some help lightening up, here are some recent links that made me laugh.
An article about Maia Zooming Her Best Life.
For those who don’t have enough kid humor in you lives already, this collection of funniest parent tweets reminded me.
If you haven’t yet watched John Krasinski’s Some Good News series, here is the most recent episode that includes a reunion of The Office cast.
And if you have a large quarantine household or are motivated to figure out how to do this on Zoom, here are simple instructions to Telephone Pictionary. Instructions are straightforward but the game itself promises silly fun.
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Your post today definitely made me smile!