ghosts + personality hires
Tell me your favorite inappropriate joke, it's how I'm staying human
The hardest I’ve laughed lately is with my sister (IYKYK- sister laughing is a whole different laugh level), as we discussed my mother’s potential Halloween costume. This would not be odd, except for the fact that my mother lives in a high-level nursing facility and has advanced dementia. The costume I suggested for my mom? A ghost.
If reading that didn’t make you laugh, I suppose I understand. Maybe instead of laughing you are feeling a little pity for me, a little “bless her heart, she’s mid menty b.” (I am.) But truly, picturing my mom as a ghost? I howled, tears streaming down my face. I left multiple audio notes for friends recounting my idea, and would laugh just trying to get the words out. The thought of my brilliant riot of a mother, shuffling around with a sheet over her head? Not only is it perfect, my mom would have loved it.
My mother’s dementia has been excruciating, in the way that these things are. But the grief has been easier to share and write about than I expected. The humor is harder to explain. The ghost joke really hits when you know my mom loved costumes and that she broke both her knees jumping off a stage in exuberance. You can understand why I’m sad, but you have to know her to know why her dressed as a ghost is so funny.
But, I’m also laughing because it feels true. My mom feels like a ghost right now, and will be a real ghost much sooner than I’d like. But it’s hard for me to say that part aloud. So I laugh at the idea of my mom with a sheet of her head. I laugh until I cry, then I laugh some more.
It feels inappropriate, and entirely appropriate. I feel like the people around me might be looking at each other with frozen half smiles thinking, “Is…Kathleen okay?” and I want to tell them, tell you, tell everyone: No! Absolutely not. I’m not okay, but the laughing helps.
THIS MADE ME LAUGH / FEEL SEEN
Shout out to my fellow personality hires! Wow, do we know how to dance around the kitchen and invite people over! Look at us go!
xoxo
Kathleen
PS- I always love hearing from you, either via quick reply or comment. I hope you too get in some inappropriate laughter this week; I hope the laughing helps.
I'm still mortified, but other people will find this funny: This weekend I was cleaning out my recently deceased uncle's storage unit with my Mom, uncle, and 2 cousins. There were boxes and boxes of unlabeled stuff to sort through. I found endearing things - a letter he'd written to my grandfather talking about me being born! Cassette tapes of him interviewing my great-grandmother! But I also found an entire box of dildos, and when I shrieked upon opening it, I had to say the phrase "an entire box of dildos" to MY MOM.
My inappropriate (ish) laugh of the week: My 16 year old son, my husband, and I were watching football when my son noted that the player they were showing on TV was #69 and laughed. My husband deadpanned "why is that number funny" and my sweetly gullible golden retriever son was like "wait, you don't know what 69 means?". My husband continued to pretend all to convincingly that he didn't ... which led to my son saying "okay, well, I guess I can explain it. Now, you know what oral sex is, right?..."
I was dying laughing that he got through an ENTIRE (mostly accurate) description without my husband cracking.