These sad times

Kenny talks loudly in the Produce section at Publix. "How you doing Mike?"

"Well, I'm dying Kenny?"

"WELL JESUS CHRIST MIKE!! THANKS FOR RUINING IT FOR THE REST OF US!"

The look on everyone’s face.  

The produce section is deathly quiet.  

Then Kenny tells me he’s coming off COVID and rushes away.

No one moves as he strolls away happily singing out loud.  

It's our 4 year old daughter, Che, who breaks the pregnant silence.

"Who's dat ol' Granddad, Dad?" she asks sitting behind the wheel of the green, race stripped kid's cart.

When I say, "Kenny, Kenny, Kenny" it's drowned out by a cacophony of fruits and vegetables wrapped in plastic hitting the bottom of baskets. 

Rushing home, I can't wait to tell Sarah!

She laughs.

I laugh again telling the story.

We laugh together!

God it feels good to laugh!

There's not enough to laugh in the world anymore, not just for those of us waging wars against Cancer, but everyone, everywhere, is struggling to find joy and meaning. 

We've entered into a time of global sadness.

Laughter remains the best medicine but, politicians and religious leaders are proving successful in making it illegal.

While we know it’s not true, though it seems so to us, Sarah are I were among the first entries into the global sadness we all now share.

Cancer always gets you bumped to the front of the line!

These last few years have been hard and we are tired.

As sad as our world sometimes is, Sarah and I fight like Hell to find something to laugh at together every day!

It's hard work anymore because the whole damn world is so sad.

God knows we fight, each in completely different yet perfectly complimentary ways, to keep living together together because, in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary, my wife and I have no plans to separate under any circumstances.

On the rarest of occasions we share tears. 

This only happens on the highest of Holy days, when neither of us have anything left and we hold on tight because there's literally nothing else to hold onto.

Mostly it's Che, the revolutionary giver of life to those who feel it slipping away, we focus on.

She makes laughter.

A chip off the old block, I suppose, because "Sarah", in ancient Hebrew, means to laugh, and our little girl makes us cackle every single day,

Truth of the matter is we're not focusing on the rest of the world right now.

We work hard to prevent the great cancerous sadness forever growing to infect how we live every single day.

We spend far too much time fighting for good health care in the world's richest country, COVID spikes, school cancelations, the daily erosion of civil rights, depression and the awful conclusion is to live is to fight, which is, of course, no way to live.

It's exhausting.

But when we find joy, and laughter comes, and a sad day becomes a magnificent one, even if only for a second, well, that's worth keeping up the fight.

If we laugh together, we live. 

Otherwise we fight just to fight, which is where the world is right now.

Sarah and I spend whatever time we have looking to feel so good, love so much, laugh so loud and rest with contentment and, maybe every once in a while, a tiny bit of peace. 

It’s not a bad way to live.

It's not a bad way to live in such a sad, sad, world.