A Quiet Moment ~ 007

If You Don't Laugh, You'll Cry

My phone died one afternoon

after taking my mother to the doctor.

It was getting late,

and I wanted to call my husband

to see if he wanted me to pick up dinner.

“Don't worry,” my mother said.

“You can use my phone.”

It was a sweet offer.

There was only one problem.

My mother didn't have a cell phone.

“That's okay, Mom. You don't have a phone.

We'll figure it out.”

She looked at me as if I were the confused one.

“I do have a phone.”

Then she reached into her purse.

And pulled out her house phone.

I started laughing.

Not a little laugh.

The kind of laughing

that takes over your whole body

and makes tears roll down your face.

My daughter started laughing too.

She was almost two.

She had no idea what was so funny.

She was laughing

because I was laughing.

Then my mother started laughing.

She didn't know why we were laughing either.

So there we were—

three generations

sitting in the car,

laughing together

for three completely different reasons.

I was laughing because I understood.

My daughter was laughing

because her mother was laughing.

And my mother was laughing

because we were.

Eventually, I explained that yes,

she did have her phone with her—

but it wasn't going to work in the car.

She still tried to hand it to me.

And I started laughing all over again.

Growing up, my mother often said,

“If you don't laugh, you'll cry.”

Dementia gave us plenty of reasons to cry.

But somehow,

life kept giving us reasons

to laugh.

That day,

sitting in the car

with her house phone in her lap,

we did both.

Sometimes I wonder how many times

my mother's house phone went places with us

before I knew it.

Or what else she carried around

in that purse.

I never looked.

In retrospect,

perhaps I should have.

May you notice a quiet moment of your own today.

🌿WGG

If you’re wondering how I captured this moment even though my phone had died, I used an old, disconnected phone we let our daughter use for games and photos when we needed to keep her distracted—like at the doctor’s appointment we had just left.

Somehow, there were three phones in the car that day—and not one of them could make a call.