Laughter IS good medicine

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs, jolted by every pebble in the road. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

As time goes by, this whole thing with my father has all but consumed my daily thoughts. I worry about Le and Vanessa, I worry about my father, I worry about my Aunt, and I worry about me, too.

Le has distanced herself from the family and has really distanced herself from me since she learned that I have power of attorney over my father's affairs now. I'm not sure she completely understands the concept of power of attorney, but I wonder if the word "power" unsettles her a bit. She won't take my calls, won't respond to my instant messages.

My father has sunk into a deep, dark depression. Although I try to chat with him a bit every day on instant messenger, and I know it helps that SOMEONE is talking to him, he starts each day off way down in that pit and I have to try to pull him back out of it.

I charged my aunt to call my father, to get off her chest what she's kept silent all these months for fear of what she'd say. I told her to get those things said NOW, so she can move past them and not have those angry, ugly words ringing in my father's head the day he goes away to prison. She'd never forgive herself if she let that happen.

Me? I still have such jumbled emotions about everything. I'm angry with my father, yet I feel something for him. Lisa says it's compassion -- maybe so. I'm angry with Le for shutting me out yet, I also realize that my anger is borne of fear that she's making decisions that are pure reaction to her anger and that she's not thinking about the long-term consequences of those decisions and how they'll affect not only her, but her daughter.

I cry a lot these days.

And so, I sat here at work yesterday, full of jumbled emotions. Lisa called, as she often does during the day, and it's always so good just to hear her voice. I was whining about the whole thing and, although I'm not sure how we got there, she encouraged me to soften things for my father by telling him that he'd be going to live for the next two years, in a gated community, like the kind people pay good money to live in. Plenty of security, lots of police patrols...

It took me nearly a half hour before the laughter died down.