A most welcome spray of Diet Coke
JUNE 12, 2014
I honestly can't remember a time when I had laughed so hard I peed my pants, until two weeks ago. It isn’t something I would normally confess, especially in such a public forum (besides, it was just a little—although it may have happened twice), but it was well worth it. A few years ago my mom decided the single children couldn’t use her house as a storage unit, and since we were all living in tiny apartments, we moved our stuff into a unit. Two weeks ago, Amelia (my sister) and I went over to clean it out a bit. I mean, how much could I really need the stuff I hadn’t touched in years? I was feeling ready to purge, and so was she. My surprise came not at the amount we threw away or piled up to give away, it came in the long-overdue laughter that wouldn’t stop.
The first eruption came as I took a drink of Diet Coke. Amelia said something or did something at that exact moment, and I lost it. I sprayed it everywhere, but I kept laughing. I don’t even remember what we were laughing at; it didn’t matter. The laughter mattered. The purging of sorrow and grief mattered.
We kept sorting through our childhood, bringing out old trinkets and memories. She’d hold up hers and I’d be taken back to a simpler time...a time when I couldn’t have imagined losing my mom so soon. She found her collection of frog memorabilia. I found my scant attempt at collections: hippos and Precious Moments (random, I know). Amid the clutter of useless items, we found letters from my mom. We found old job charts. We found neatly filed school projects and assignments that my mom had organized and kept for us. We found her love, and we absorbed it.
The laughter continued. At times it became so big and forceful that I had to bend over and sit down. I couldn’t seem to get the laughter out fast enough; my face pulled tight and my eyes closed. It wasn’t a pretty laugh—it was big and free. I gave into it...I let my face pull taunt and my legs feel weak. I didn’t think about how I must have looked, I solely focused on the laughter. Somehow I knew that if I thought too hard that force would turn to tears: the border between the laughter and the tears too tenuous. So, I laughed. I laughed so I wouldn’t cry. Sharing the laughter with Amelia felt particularly healing. When I was about 6 or 7 our family was taking a drive in the High Uintas. At some point in the drive, Amelia and I couldn’t stop laughing, and we got in trouble. I’m not sure why the inability to stop laughing should ever result in getting in trouble, but it did. My dad made us get out of the car and walk. He drove off around a bend. I was terrified. Amelia squared her 10-year-old shoulders and resolutely said, “When he comes back, ignore him.” I didn’t know what to do. When he came back, we kept walking. At some point we got in; although, I don’t remember much about getting back in the car or the drive home. I only remember the laughter.
We always knew that if we could get my mom to laugh with us then we wouldn’t get in trouble. It wasn’t hard; my mom loved to laugh. We inherited that from her. She was the source of joy in our home.
As Amelia and I placed the remaining rubber tubs back in the storage unit, I felt connected to my mom. The laughter felt part of her, the part that I was missing so terribly. The sorrow and grief started to come back, but the laughter stayed as well.
I believe laughter is truly healing.