Our Very Selves Are Not Only Significant but Are Hilarious
I am not glad that in the last two years, highly significant people have died. This year my grandmother, Linda in July 1990, and the following June, friend Cal Gregg. My grandmother was abundantly witty, but Cal was simply the funniest man around. He never forgot a joke, and he never failed to tell it well. He was an Irishman with a powerfully dark side, but his humor challenged it with brightness. Till he slipped into a coma, Cal rose out of the most dreadful moments of pain or anguish with a witty or humorous aside. Laughter was his constant gift to those of us who walked with hi through that strange valley of death.
His life was significant. He absolutely did not want it to finish. He wanted years with his eldest son’s child. He wanted to see his younger son through high school. The significance of being, of treasuring life could not have been more firmly felt by anyone. But Cal never ceased to squeeze humorous pleasure from significance. Many of us would massage his tumor-rippled back in wee hours of the night. One night, finding himself hilarious and me much too inclined toward a maudlin mood, he said, “The good thing about losing all this weight is that my friends can work on my back and I feel it in front, too!”
A favorite Cal story concerns the day his arm broke. By the time this happened cancer had vigorously infiltrated every cranny of his body. Still, he fought. He went to work as often as he could, even for a few hours at a time. He attended Grapple Group, where between shuffles to the bathroom to allow the sickness of chemotherapy to have its say, he contributed, listened to others, cared about what was going on, asked about the rest of us. He still had moments of planning to conquer cancer. Then, his arm broke.
A back door to his small business warehouse required a little tug up to close properly. We all do that little yank occasionally, to some door or other. But in this light lift, Cal’s arm shattered. Cancer made its effect clear. How much more can he take, I thought. How discouraging, I thought. And it was. Poor Cal, I thought, till I went to see him after X-rays.
“Sue needs to pray more specifically,” he said,
“What?” I wondered. Sue Hendrix is the friend who established F.O.G. She was one of several nurses who helped Cal regularly and faithfully.
“Well, yeah,” he said. “You know how she prayed, ‘Lord, give Cal a break.’”
Goodness how we laughed. What does it mean when a dying friend tousles yourhair, or your expectations, helps you relax, recognizes his significance but never ceases to remember that being human has a hilarious side, equally as precious as the serious side.
In certain turnings of truth, being human is hilarious. It is such a brief, precious, and mysterious thing. We are basically bright but in so many ways helpless and hapless, so out of touch with nature’s instinctual creatures. Especially those of us called civilized. We are solidly incapable of ever “always” doing it right, whatever “it” is. We cannot even agree on what is good for us to eat, let alone on theologies, or policies, or means of peace. So serious are we about frivolous things and so frivolous about serious things.
How glad I am that God understands the whole while I struggle with the pieces. Laughter regularly reminds me that we are only human, but that we are trulyhuman. No other species has the blessing of such sensitive self-awareness or the gift of sophisticated laughter. No other, the burden of keeping those things on an even keel. A commitment to laughter, a respect for its place among significant selves, helps keep us real.
Coming up: Conclusion, chapter SIX
“It will never work,” my grandfather declared one particular day in my childhood . . .”
