Hey all! For the next few posts I will be remembering and talking a lot about my dad. This month would have been his birthday and I can’t think of any better form of healing than to write. Please understand this is not a cry for your condolences. We have all lost at one point in our life and we all know that dealing with it will come differently from each and every one of us. Mine has seeped out inch by inch over the past few years and I really appreciate being able to share this with you on my blog. So, I hope you can understand that this is not meant to be sad, it’s just meant to be heard for my own type of therapy.
I have gone over and over in my head what I would said had I chosen to talk to the room full of people at my dad’s funeral. At that particular time, the words just weren’t connecting and I felt as if anything I said just wouldn’t have been enough. SO, after lots of time to think and the urge to say it out loud grows, I recently wrote down what I would have said…
“Have you ever paid attention to the different types of laughter? I sometimes try to gauge a person’s laugh in categories. Not that I have ever nailed down a particular list of categories, I guess I rank them by each moment that they occur. But I can definitely define 2 different types of laugh most of the time.
First, a type of laughter you hear often from colleagues or acquaintances that you come in contact with daily. You know the laugh, right? Basically a deliberate laugh to calm nerves, indicate that you are enjoying the topic being discussed or to set a good tone to the conversation. It’s a controlled laughter and it shows approval.
A second type of laughter; the form that comes from the depths and rocks your inner core. The type that even in grade school, if you were about to lose recces, you still wouldn’t be able to stop laughing. Or even worse, the kind you get now as an adult sitting in a meeting at work, then whole meeting stops abruptly to find out what on earth is so funny. Right? You know exactly what I’m talking about, it makes your sides hurt, it hurts your face and sometimes you find yourself frankly looking for the nearest restroom so you don’t wet yourself.
Well, if you knew my dad you knew he was laugh #2– 100% of the time. There was no deliberate laugh to show approval in his world. This man knew how to laugh one way and that was a way that found me as a teenager in a movie theater shirking down to the floor so that I wouldn’t be seen sitting next to the man cackling like a hyena who struggles with asthma. You all know his laugh. I mean, straight up, ugly face laugh. He turned heads when he lit up a fire-y laugh. Even after watching Home Alone 10 or more times, he would still belly laugh until tears from that darn movie.
I will forever remember his laugh. I am at peace knowing that there isn’t a sweeter sound any of us could make. He was so happy for whatever moment he was laughing in and I love having those memories.”
THE END.
