03 Aug All at the Same Time
After a few days full of MRIs, physical exams, EMGs and nerve conduction studies, my father-in-law met with the neurologist to go over his results. We had known something wasn’t right, but on this day, there was a definitive answer to what was wrong. The neurologist gently told him that he had Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—more commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease—a progressive motor neuron disease without a cure.
I don’t know why we went to lunch after he received this diagnosis. No one really felt like eating. But it was lunch time and sometimes all you can do is put one foot in front of the other and follow life’s schedule to eat a meal around noon.
We all sat in a booth, staring at our menus. Behind the menus, the words blurred as we attempted to process this news. No one was saying much.
And that’s when we heard it: laughter. It was coming from the other end of the restaurant, where the bartender must have heard something hysterical. He had the kind of hearty, powerful laugh that comes from the belly. Deep and full and carbonated, it filled the entire restaurant.
We looked up, drawn to the unexpected noise. We listened as the man laughed and laughed. At the table, we looked at each other. And then one by one, starting with my father-in-law, we laughed. And we laughed and we laughed and laughed. So much that our sides started hurting and our eyes watered.
The waitress came to our table and smiled a radiant smile. “What a happy group,” she said. “Are you hungry? Ready to order?”
She didn’t know that we weren’t really either of those things—happy or hungry. But we ordered anyway.
As we walked out with our to-go boxes full of food we had barely touched, I think we all felt a little better thanks to the gift of a stranger.
His laugh had nourished us. It had lifted us up in a way that was both freeing and filling.
Perhaps the most beautiful paradox of all is the way things can be so intensely beautiful and so immensely difficult, all at the same time.