Every day with Alzheimer’s and Dad is a new adventure – a non-stop rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows – often in a short period of time. Humor is one of the best ways for my family (and I believe any caregiver in this situation) to deal with this horrible disease that makes a person un-learn and regress. Now before anyone gets all touchy here – I mean no disrespect at all when I laugh at anything regarding Dad. My dad always had an amazing sense of humor and some of that is still lingering when he is having good moments. I know deep down inside, he would be laughing with us too as he always understood the value in humor. Heck, when he used to work in the home office, he would call a network of friends up – not even say hello – tell a joke, laugh and hang up.

Laughter is an instant vacation. ~Milton Berle~

Well…the other morning I was sitting checking my email and drinking my coffee with dad’s bed alarm next to me. All of a sudden I look behind me and there he is – holding the dog’s bone and his glass case and finagling his walker somehow. He asked, “What am I supposed to do with these?” My first thought was – OMG – how the hell did he get that bone off the floor? I swear when I am not looking or when he is still half asleep he has some super-human powers we aren’t privy to seeing! In the day he can barely bend over at all. Next thought – shoot – damn battery in the alarm must have died. Next thought – OMG – this is flippin’ funny! A vision of dad in his PJ’s, on his walker with 2 random items. I had to call hubby up immediately and the scene from The Jerk has had us laughing for 2 days now. We added the dog Chulo to his list of all he needs too:)

Today, it was Dad entertaining the Ochsner waiting room. He was singing, telling everyone how wonderful they were, blowing kisses to the ladies and telling all of them they were beautiful. Dora (1 of dad’s helpers) and I were rolling on the floor laughing. What was even funnier was to see how people reacted. He certainly livened up the place! He told the nurse she was beautiful, sang to the doctor (who had the personality of my left toenail) and greeted and sang to everyone he could today. I’m laughing thinking how funny the scene was in the waiting room. I just laughed the whole way with him with an occasional shhhhh….keep it down. I wiped a couple of tears from dad as I was writing this post as he had a sad moment. Looking forward to the next funny one again!

I write about moods in this previous post.