If you were a fly on the wall in my writing groups for cancer patients and survivors, you might be surprised to discover how often we laugh. Yep, you read it right: LAUGH. I hadn’t thought much about it, but a couple of weeks ago, as I was introducing a new member to my UCSD writing group, I said something that made everyone laugh.
“Oh,” the new member said, a note of relief in her voice, “you laugh in this group.”
“Oh yes, we do,” one of the group smiled, nodding at me. “She likes to laugh.”
As a matter of fact, I do. It’s a rare day when I don’t find something amusing in my life to laugh about. I don’t do it consciously. It’s just a habit, one I like to think I learned from my father. While he didn’t have the happiest of lives, Dad loved a good story, a good joke, and always had a smile or a chuckle to share with his children. It drew us closer to him; a smile or a shared joke was always more inviting than the stern and often punitive style of our mother’s. It lightened a dark mood; it made life—or the chores we’d been assigned for one infraction or another—seem less serious, more bearable.
There are many emotions expressed in any of our writing sessions. Cancer is no laughing matter, but laughter is good medicine. I think of R., battling metastatic prostate cancer, walking into the group two weeks ago, his body weakened the multiple rounds of chemotherapy, but with a little cartoon sticker stuck to the side of his bald head, immediately causing us to smile. Or the fun we had, during an earlier series, when I challenged the group to talk back to cancer, but using only Shakespearean-style insults. K. read hers aloud, entitling it, “Cancer, Thy Name is Maltworm,” with a sub-title, “Cursing cancer with help from the Bard:” Here’s her first stanza:
Get back, beast.
thou villainous bag of boil-brained barnacles.
Go back to that special place in hell
reserved for you and your murderous kind.
Get out, out damn spot/shadow/lump.
Get out, out vilest of viles, rankest of ranks; thou pox-marked, toad-spotted, measle.
And come not back…
I confess there were tears in the room as she read, but not of sadness. We were laughing so hard that tears began to run down some of our faces. It wasn’t just the wit and fun of the writing, there was community and healing in our shared laughter.
Think of Norman Cousins, former editor of the Saturday Review, given up to die and nearly completely paralyzed from “ankylosing spondylitis,” a degenerative disease that causes the breakdown of collagen, Cousins began watching Marx Brothers movies and enjoying plenty of hearty belly laughs daily, with the result that he began to experience relief from his pain. Gradually, he regained the use of his limbs, returned to his job, and wrote his book, Anatomy of An Illness. In it, he asked, “is it possible that love, hope, faith, laughter, confidence and the will to live have therapeutic value?” I think they do.
Some time ago, I read an article in Coping with Cancer Magazine, “Finding Humor in the Midst of Cancer,” by Jim Higley, a prostate cancer survivor and father of three. When the news of his diagnosis spread, his telephone answering machine filled with messages of condolence:
Each message was a carbon copy of the previous one. “Jim, I just heard what’s going on. I am so sorry. But I know you’ll be fine. You’re strong. I know you’re buried right now, but call me when you can. And let me know if there is anything I can do for you.”
Finally, I found something that made me laugh.
These were messages oozing with love. I knew and appreciated that. I just found the quantity of calls funny. Crazy. Unexpected. Who gets 30 messages? Was I really going to call people back? And what was I supposed to tell people to do? There were probably so many things I did or would need, but I didn’t have a clue at that moment. What I did have was the return of my warped sense of humor.
I’ve got an idea, I thought to myself. Maybe I could tell all these people there is something they can do! I’ll tell them I’m registered! Brides do it. Even grooms do it. Why can’t a sick person?!
The absurdity of my idea made me laugh out loud. It was as if the release valve on a pressure cooker was finally opening up, and a bunch of steam was spewing out into the air.
I could only imagine the confusion on people’s faces if they actually heard this silliness. Most would know I was teasing, of course. But I’m sure a few people would be stumped – especially if I did a new greeting on my answering machine:
“Hi, you’ve reached the Higley house. We’re swamped with all this cancer crap. For those of you wondering what you can do, I’m now registered at Crate and Barrel, Eddie Bauer, and the local hardware store. Thanks for your concern!”
Higley described the therapeutic effects of making himself—and others—laugh:… when you are raised with the gift of laughter, as I was, it can’t stay suppressed forever. It’s too powerful. Thank goodness for that. I eventually could see bits of “ha-ha” in my own life. Certainly not in the cancer, but in the mind-blowing circumstances that suddenly consumed my life. And laughing at parts of those experiences made me feel a little more alive.
The funniest part of it all was that the more I allowed myself to laugh, the more therapeutic my tears became. (March/April 2012)
Laughter is good medicine. And we all need it, no matter if it’s cancer, an over-busy and stressful life, remembering loved ones lost, or just being together with friends and loved ones. We need to laugh together just as sometimes, we need to weep together. As Mark Twain said, “The human race has only one really effective weapon and that’s laughter. The moment it arises, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.”
It’s a sentiment captured in the Disney film, Mary Poppins. I remember the lyrics Dick Van Dyke sang. I was in college at the time, but even then, just singing along with him made me shed that self-important attitude of being a terribly serious college student and always, laugh out loud:
The more I laugh
The more I fill with glee
And the more the glee
The more I’m a merrier me
It’s embarrassing!
The more I’m a merrier me!
Find that sunny spirit in you–the “ha, ha” in your life. And, if you’re inspired to do so, write about something that makes you smile—or laugh—each time you remember it.
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