Laughter the Best...You Know!

I'm so amazed at and grateful to my mum for the way she has dealt with the medical crises in her life. She always manages to find the humor in the situation, and to handle things with grace and deportment. I know that the laughter she brought to my father's bedside helped his healing process immensely. Through the prostate and heart surgeries, mum always had my father, the staff, and me smiling. Even when the cancer took over my father's life, she helped us smile through our tears. We even had the funeral director laughing when we went to make those final arrangements!

Now my father is gone, and Mum is facing a health crisis of her own. Last week she had to have a laser treatment in her eye. The dye they inject makes a person extremely photosensitive and subject to severe sunburn, so the doctor advised my mum to cover herself up completely against any ultriviolet rays. She called me when the procedure was finished, and I picked her up at the doctor's office. We left the building with my Mum dressed in a long-sleeved white cotton blouse, a batik sarong wrapped around her head, white cotton gloves, and Ray-Ban sunglasses a la Tom Cruise in "Top Gun." I was wearing the wide-brimmed straw hat I had brought for her, with my new big crystal-studded sunglasses.

Dressed in our skirts and sandles, we must have made quite a pair. I know Mum was feeling rather self-conscious, considering it was well over 80 degrees outside! She started laughing, and I couldn't help but join in. All the way to the parking garage, we made jokes about her being the "Mad woman of Shiloh," and how it looked like I was helping her escape from an embassy somewhere! Too funny!

I know my mother is scared. The prognosis for her eyesight doesn't appear to be very good, but she is maintaining her sense of humor. For me, that's extremely reassuring, because I know as long as she can laugh about things and see the funny side of a situation, she's going to be all right. The two of us will muddle through this ever-changing dynamic of an elder parent and daughter and changing health, and we'll be able to do it with grace and dignity.

Randomnesses

Reading and commenting on blogs and watching Gilmore Girls at the same time is an exercise in confusion and lots of words floating around in my head!

Still loving "So You Think You Can Dance," but that Jaymz (what guy really spells his name like that?) has really got to go! Benji and Donyelle, on the other hand, just keep getting better and better!