It's okay to laugh

Jim and I loved to laugh together. the trendy plaque, live love laugh, really did fit our lives. We truly enjoyed laughing together. Our lives were richer for being able to laugh  together, at ourselves, at the world, at anything and sometimes everything, even cancer sometimes. 

Some of my earliest memories are of laughter. I remember hearing my uncles and dad outside laughing during family gatherings. I couldn't wait until I was old enough to hang out with them, to find out what was so funny they'd snort. For as long as she could my mother kept me from their jokes, not appreciating their sense of humor. Eventually, though, I was out in the front yard with 'the bothers', laughing  and snorting with them, I used to be embarrassed when something would make me laugh until I snorted, now it's just part of my charm, and a compliment to whoever made me laugh!

After Jim died I suppose I didn't feel much like laughing, after all I was a grieving widow. How could I laugh about anything? What could possibly be funny?  How can I ever find joy in anything? A few days after he died, my friend +Mary Thompson and I were planning songs for his service. We were scouring the internet, YouTube, iTunes, looking at lyrics, listening to songs that would fit Jim's taste in music and be appropriate for the occasion.  We found ourselves crying and laughing. It was just funny, some of the songs that we never thought of as being about death but they really did fit. It felt good to laugh, even if it was dark humor. 

It was hard to find joy in anything despite the occasional laughter when what would be called gallows humor did come in to play. But for the most part I really did think that joy was no longer part of my life. 

As months have passed, I have been able to find laughter again, occasional creeping in. Just a few weekends ago I was with my girlfriends and we got to the point where were laughing to the point of tears. it felt so good. We were wearing tiaras, sitting in a restaurant and just rolling with laughter and the pure joy of life. People around us were't even annoyed, they were caught up in our spirit.

I think people are afraid to have fun in front of someone who is grieving, but at the right time humor can really be the best medicine.

Heather Spohr writes for the Huffington Post about how she dealt with 'crappy things' with gallows humor in the face of her friend Jackie's terminal illness. "It was the kind of stuff most people would drop their jaws over, but it really helped us cope with everything life had thrown at us. One of the things we'd joke about is how there weren't any greeting cards for what we were going through. No one makes cards for cancer! So instead, we'd scratch out the slogans on store-bought cards and write in our own (inappropriate) words. It might have been strange, but I cherish those silly cards now that she's gone." 

(C)@emilymcdowell_ 

After her friend's death, Ms. Spohr discovered , Emily McDowell (whose work appears to the right), an artist, who among other things, creates empathy cards. Spohr writes, "They are mostly for cancer, but a few are non-specific. They are realistic, humorous, and so, so perfect. I laughed and cried when I read them, because Jackie would have loved all of them. I hate that I can't send her any of them. I miss her and her contagious laugh so much." Jim would have loved them, too!

I miss laughing with Jim. And I miss his laughter. I would love to hear his deep, rumbling laugh one more time. But he would not want me to stop laughing, finding joy and humor in the ordinary and ridiculous. I honor his love of life when I enjoy mine.

I am grateful at the occasional glimpses of joy, the moments I laugh until I cry, the times I snort.  They are as much a part of this journey as the tears and sadness. 

Everything happens for a reason??

Um, yeah, no, as my friend Marie would say.

When something bad happens, often people, well meaning people might say, 'everything happens for a reason.' I believe this is just the 10% of our brains we use trying to make sense of a sometimes senseless world. My spouse died from complications of cancer treatment at the age of 53. What is the reason? I've had friends lose a spouse when they had young children at home. Where is the reason in that? I had a miscarriage. Not sure I know the plan there. And people I know have borne the unbearable death of a their child. Certainly no one can see the reason in that, yet, we persist in looking for meaning.

I was raised in deep Baptist tradition. We were taught that everything that happens is part of God's plan. And I believed that. Until I didn't. I learned about free will, if we had a choice, then how did our free will fit into a master plan? And I learned about hunger, hatred, war and abuse. I wasn't sure how any of that could fit into God's plan. See, my god is a loving god. So I searched for a way to make sense of all the bad things in the world and still cling to my belief in a loving God. 

In the early 80s I first read Harold Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People.  His son was diagnosed with a rare disease at about three years old and they knew he would not live past his teens. Kushner, a rabbi, asked many of the same questions I have struggled with. But finally, he writes, We too need to get over the questions that focus on the past and on the pain—“ Why did this happen to me?”—and ask instead the question which opens doors to the future: “Now that this has happened, what shall I do about it?”

I do believe in God. And I think God is really, really busy with really important things. And so he allows us to make choices, and live with those choices. He allows diseases to progress. And he allows us to discover ways to fight and treat them. He allows hatred, just as he allows love. It is our job, in this life, to love one another, to love ourselves, and take care of each other.

Yet, still when I hear that my life is aligned with some cosmic plan, it breaks my heart. Why do I have to go through the sadness, the loss, the grief and loneliness for some cosmic plan to reveal itself? What wonderful plan could possibly be worth it? Even so, in Jim's illness, and since his death, we never asked, "why me?"  Why not me? 

I've often said the few things I regret in life are the things I didn't do. That even bad breakups where I thought my heart would never recover, led me to the life I loved....my life with Jim. Even so, I can't conceive of a time where I will look back on his death and see the cosmic plan. I don't want to think that there could ever be a moment where his death seemed okay, justified or even right.  

Today's meditation manta was, There is a way I can fulfill my true purpose in life. It is still so hard to see how, or maybe why, my true purpose will be fulfilled without Jim. But not living this life to its fullest would be an insult to Jim's memory. He so embraced life and to his last breath, he did not want to give up. I strive to live with the same enthusiastic energy and joy. 

Kushner summarizes,

In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened. Are you capable of forgiving and accepting in love a world which has disappointed you by not being perfect, a world in which there is so much unfairness and cruelty, disease and crime, earthquake and accident? Can you forgive its imperfections and love it because it is capable of containing great beauty and goodness, and because it is the only world we have?? Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be? And if you can do these things, will you be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in this less-than-perfect world?

Solstice

For as long as I have known about Winter Solstice, it has been my most favorite holiday. Yes, it is the shortest day, and longest night of the year. But in that darkness is held the promise of light and warmth. Summer is on it's way. The days are now getting longer. I imagine the first humans wondering why the days were getting shorter and shorter. Was time running out? Would their lives be plunged into eternal darkness? Think of the joy they had when the sun once again began to retake the day. Generations since have had simple faith that even in the darkest night, there was hope that the light would return. We now know the science behind the solstices. But for me that does not diminish the faith and hope that I feel in my darkest hours. The belief I must have...that joy and warmth and light will return.

The world keeps turning, and day always follows night.

After the cold, dark, winter, spring returns with cleansing rains and blossoms.

After fire appears to devastate the landscape, seeds released by the heat, burst forth with new, verdant life.

Yes, even after death, life begins again.

At first it might just be a smile, one day without tears. And then like a false spring, the darkness returns. But just as the days after winter solstice become longer, so do the periods where life without you seems possible.

Hope and energy slowly, sometimes falteringly return. The tiny hand of a child, reaching out to hold mine. The sunlight sparking like diamonds on the sea. The kind, knowing compassion of a stranger at the grocery store when I unexpectledly burst out crying. A long drive with the top down through the lush forest. 

I still miss you, Jim, and always will. The grief never leaves, but I learn to live with it. My grief has taught me compassion, patience, and I have a strength within me I never knew was there. The darkness in my heart fades, but still is there. But like the longest,darkest night, I know the light will return.

Masquerade

Sometimes I feel like a total fake. People tell me I'm doing so well...having fun, thriving. What they don't see is how I fall apart every night. I miss Jim so much and my heart just aches when the world around me stops and I have time to just be. Now I understand why Aunt Gladys told me to keep busy, because her generation doesn't really want to deal with feelings. And that's what happens at the end of the day, when things are quiet. Or in the shower every morning, where the water masks my tears, and I am literally bare to my emotions. Hidden or not, I have to face my feelings.

It's funny...not haha funny but strange... I know all the right words, 'you don't get over it, you just go through it' and 'it doesn't get easier, you just get stronger'  And I know they are true. But knowing and feeling are two different things.

I expected after a year had passed that "helpful" folks would encourage me to 'get busy living'. What I did not anticipate was that I would have those same expectations for myself. I thought that I would be more joyful, more energetic and more ready to get on with my life. But that's not always the case. I still sometimes just want to stay in bed and cry missing Jim, loving Jim. I find myself getting impatient with me. While I expected, no, demanded, patience, understanding and compassion from my family and friends, for some strange reason I wasn't able to give the same to myself. Why is it easier for us to love others than love ourselves? To be patient and kind with others than it is to be with ourselves?