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“Always keep laughing” – Bozo the Clown

There are things in life that you find funny. They’re not meant to be funny, actually, but they just come across that way.

My brother forwarded me an email the other day. We’ve been looking for a place to inter my father’s ashes, a place where we can go and remember our lives together. A place to honor his memory. A place where he and my mom will someday rest after nearly 50 years of sharing life together.

“There's been a little snag in regards to my father's ashes,” his email to the curator of the cemetery read. “My mother cannot recall what she's done with them…”

Huh?

“Dad’s missing?” I said in a message I had left a couple of weeks back when I had first been alerted to the situation. “As in, no one knows where he is?”

“You got it,” was his reply. We backtracked for a bit. I was frantic. Had anybody actually looked for him? When was the last time that we saw the brown cardboard box that held what was left of this ginormous man who, by the way, was far too large to even fit in a small cardboard box? And where?

This was not good.

OK. So on the surface this isn’t funny. It’s actually not funny at all. It’s awful really. Really, truly awful.

And yet…

My mother’s memory is slipping away. A brilliant, intelligent, competent professional and mother of 4, she can no longer remember where she is or what day it is or who came to visit. At one time she spent her time writing state legislation and developing programs that changed the lives of young people. Now, she spends her days doing art projects on an antique lions head table, painting suncatchers and making foam collages and needing to be reminded to break for lunch. Although she lives with my sister, the beautiful woman she gave birth to 47 years ago, there are days when she does not recognize her face.

“Have you met my children?” she asked her the other evening as she listed them by name. “Do you know Suzanne and her boys?”

My sister just smiled.

There are days when the text messages fly, back and forth across the smart phones that connect us, like the bright red Batphone connected Batman to Commissioner Gordon. They are a transcript of their lives together. Text after text, a continual series of “I Said, She Said” that records the challenging moments of altered reality that she must endure each day. It is my sister’s lifeline, the way that she stays sane in the midst of the insanity of my mother’s dementia.

At times it is maddening. At times exhausting. The disease of dementia eats away at the very core of the brain, erasing not only the memories of every day life, but the person as well. There are glimpses of who she was. Moments when “Mom” is with us, but more often than not it is our memories that we cling to, our mental scrapbook of a life that now seems so long ago, so far away.

Anthony is a member of our writing group at the shelter. A combat veteran, he was injured when an IED exploded in his hands, leaving him seriously wounded. It would take many months and countless surgeries to repair the damage from this tragic accident. It would be more months before he recovered, before he could begin his life again. Anthony can no longer remember who he once was. His words on Wednesday stuck me like a knife.

“Sometimes when I look There are bright flashes and oncoming shadows Growing ever brighter. Sometimes when I dream There are voices and oncoming speculations Growing ever darker.

So where I live is in the now The now is with me. I don’t have to look for it, or dream about it. It will never fall away. I can never lose now.” – A.

Without a past, he lives in today. Every day, every hour, every minute. Without a memory of what was, he is creating what is right now. There is a certain relief in living in today.

And so the texts and emails and phone calls fly. There is worry and sadness and fear of what is to come, but there is also laughter.

“Is it necessary to actually inter anything?” my brother’s email continued. “Or can we just purchase a lot and put a memorial stone there in the event that we can't find them? I don't think we'll need a funeral director or clergy person present, especially if we can't even find the ashes...”

I found myself laughing aloud as I read his words. We don’t really need the ashes to remember. Dad is still with us, he always will be, tucked away in the memories we carry each day. And ironically, even though she is still with us physically, Mom is there too.

And so we laugh at what is. At the moments that seem crazy and confusing and yes, even sad.

We laugh, because it’s better than crying.