RAOKA for March: Laughter

Laughter.

Wow.  What a topic to be focusing on during this particular time of my life.  We’re still dealing with the confusion of my father’s passing.  Settling the “estate” has been (to put it mildly) a challenge.  To try to focus on laughter during a time of grief seems like a major contradiction, doesn’t it?

Perhaps.  And yet, keeping the theme of Laughter in mind over the past few weeks has been such a great help.

My dad’s good friend, Jim, visited last week.  We sat for the longest time and just reminisced.  He had me laughing out loud with stories of my dad on the golf course.  Dad was quite the tease — he loved to see people smile because of his interesting (one might even go so far as to call it “smart-arsed”) sense of humor.  His buddies all loved him, and even in the last year, whenever a new person would join their team, and this eighty four year old man would hobble out on to the course, his friends’ eyes would start to sparkle.  They knew that, though he appeared to be growing feeble, once he hauled his club back, that little white ball was going to sail farther (and sometimes even straighter) than those struck by guys half his age.

He did love to make people laugh.  He made various trips to various hospitals over the last few years (for various reasons) and the nurses always loved him.  When I’d go to visit, I’d usually hear giggling from way down the hall, and would know it was coming from my dad’s room.

Pop was one of seven children … two girls and five “all American boys”.  I don’t know how my grandmother managed to live to ninety-three with those boys around.  I will always remember her steel-gray hair, and I’ve no doubt that every one of those gray hairs had a story behind it, thanks to her rambunctious sons.  Like the story about how they tied a blanket to little sister Janice and threw her off the porch roof to see if blankets worked as parachutes.  Or the time brother Walter smuggled home a horse and hid it in the garage, which then ran away down the Bear Mountain Extension with little brother Royce on its back.  Or the tales about the annual hockey sticks which went out to the pond each Christmas morning all new and shiny, and came home the same day in splinters.

As we grow older, we begin to realize that more of life lies behind us than ahead.  It is when we focus on memories that are laced with laughter that these sober realizations begin to lighten up.  The smiles tilt the corners of our mouths toward the heavens, and as our expressions lift, so do our spirits.

So, as you walk forth each day, strive to build laughter-laden memories.  The more we laugh at what is behind us, the more there will be to laugh about ahead.  The higher our spirits lift while we walk this earth, the farther they will soar when we leave it.

I know that my Dad soars high and far indeed … for he left a legacy of laughter.

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The RAOKA mission seeks to remind us that Random Acts of Kick Arse happen all around us. Each month, a member of Sami’s RAOKA groupies picks a new theme to focus our attention on something positive and good in this world.

On the first Wednesday of the month (or Thursday for you folks living on the other half of this world) we all post about what we’ve observed.

Please visit the other RAOKA members and enjoy their thoughts on the theme of the month:

Sami at Life, Laughs & Lemmings
Lance at Jungle of Life
Dani at Positively Present
Lori at Jane Be Nimble
Zeenat at Positive Provocations

[logo designed by Melissa at Operation Nice]

Related posts:

1. RAOKA for May — Serenity
2. RAOKA — The Essence of Grace
3. RAOKA (Random Acts of Kick Arse), October