When Dad was dying, we had a good giggle.
I've always been one to laugh at seemingly inappropriate times. Take my final year of high school, for example, having to stand up and present a speech on euthanasia and collapsing in hysterical laughter, so much that I was told to take a walk around the school that I was told to calm down. Three times I lapped the grounds, chuckling so hard I had tears rolling down my face. Needless to say, I failed. I never could get myself together. Somehow that emotional overload of presenting a speech to my peers was far too much for me, and the only way I could vent was through laughter, a coping mechanism for my teen angst.
I recall Dad falling off my horse so hard he pissed blood for a week. I looked back as I thundered along on my other horse, a skewbald pinto called Bayleaf, just in time to see him thwack the ground, and the animal screech to a halt and look at him as if to say: what you doing down there, man? - though I knew he'd twitched his whole body sideways to throw his rider off on purpose. Hilarious. I was cackling as I leapt off Bay and raced to Dad's side to make sure nothing was broken. I deeply cared for my father, but my body seemed to think this was hilariously funny.
Years later, suffering from panic attacks in a hotel room in Melbourne where we were sequestered away from greater Melbourne by virtue of the possibility we were infected with COVID and had the potential to bring the nation to it's knees with what I have recently heard the Betoota Advocate, an Australian satirical site, call the pangolin virus. Pangolin, because they're genetically 99 percent similar to the virus sequence. Pangolins aside, I'm on my hands and knees hyperventilating at 3 am, in utter panic mode. It is not pleasant being locked in a hotel room for two weeks. It felt a little like this:
What does one do when they are on their hands and knees dying? Compose lyrics to the tune of, and bastardising the lyrics of, The Eagles Hotel California. I to this day think I was the first, though some have followed:
Welcome to the Hotel Quarantina
Such a lonely place (such a lonely place)
Such a lonely space
We’re not living it up at the Hotel Quarantina
Not a nice surprise (not a nice surprise)
Bring your forks and knives
Think you are going somewhere
Maybe you think twice
You are all just prisoners here of Morrison’s device
And in our four walled chambers
We gather for the feast
We stab it with our plastic knives
But we just can't kill the beast
Last thing we remember
They permanently shut the door
I had to find diazepam pack
To stop me waking up at four
"Relax", said the hotel staff
We’ll try to give you some relief
You can check out in twelve days or so
Won’t be long before you leave
Back to my father dying, then.
We joked a lot. The family has never forgotten, being crowded beside his hospital bed, surrounded by doctors being asked how he was going. Without any self consciousness or sense of irony, he replied: 'Well, I did have an erection this morning!'. All medical staff and family present were doing uttmost to stifle guffaws. But sadness and laughter brought us closer as a family. It eased the tension. It made us feel that life was a little more normal. A little less like we were about to lose a man we loved. I was so grateful for parents that felt and expressed hope, and didn't want to dwell on death, but focus on life, and love, and laughter. That is a way to die, I remembered thinking. One day I hope to honour that.
Being an emotional person - I feel tremendously, and largely - I store tension in my body whenever I am sad, frustrated, angry, or nervous. It sticks in my tissues, tightens my psoas, contracts my diaphragm. Laughter releases all of that. It causes all that tension stored in my solar plexus to release and dissipate. Our bodies often want to laugh, whether we want them to or not. Our bodies know that laughter can release tension, and it seeks to protect itself against the difficult and traumatic things that might be happening around us.
We weren't giggling because my father was dying, we were giggling because we were coping with him dying.
So it is with me - laughter is always a release from tension.
Last week, I had one awful night of nightmares where my anxieties played out and I woke crying, and cried for some time, letting the shower water wash away my tears. The following night I dreamt I was checking mandarins for a heartbeat by holding them up to my ear. Mandarins, it turns out, have tiny hearts that beat rhythmically when they are ripe. When I remembered this dream fact in the shower, I couldn't stop laughing. What an antidote that was to alleviate the previous night's horror. My body needed to shake loose that tension. Never mind that my husband thought I was just an incy bit cuckoo, listening to my hysteria hit fever pitch in the ensuite.
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I married a man who makes me laugh every day. He has a lovely, dry British humour I appreciate. I remember the first time we laughed together, eighteen years ago, stoned on a couch. It was a British sitcom called 'Early Doors' and we laughed at one inane joke so hard our faces contorted. I knew then he was a keeper. It was a raw, open, beautiful moment of pure joy. We've had many since. Laughing together has often been an anathema to the stresses of the world we encounter outside the gentleness of our home together. Thinking of him makes me smile. That is love.
One day my father will die, and I will smile, and remember the times where we laughed, and brought joy to each other's lives.
Laughter connects us. It helps us cope by relieving tension. It eases that which is uneasy, awkward and uncomfortable. It's a powerful icebreaker. It's needed in a world that renders us into puddles of crying despair in the base of a shower.
This post was written in response to Natural Medicine & Holos-Lotus's joint 'Laughter as Medicine' challenge, open until 24th July. You can find the challenge guidelines in the Natural Medicine community, or for the Spanish community, in the Holos-Lotus community. There's around 100 HIVE in prizes courtesy of @theycallmedan, @naturalmedicine, @justinparke, @holos-lotus and me, @riverflows. You can talk about the benefits of laughter, or perhaps write a post that makes us laugh.