Nick Riddell 1930 - 2014

Yesterday I told you my experience with a friend with severe fibromyalgia who discover her increased pain was from an inflammation. This morning I talked with a friend who last week after finally having to take his wife to a memory care unit at health complex was going in for a routine colonoscopy. Today when I called him back he told me that something went well during this routine procedure and he was rushed to the hospital to have his spleen removed. A friend I took to a clinic a week ago for a routine Endoscopy told me today he has cancer.

If all this medical talk is getting you down let me tell you about a memorial service I went to tonight. It was fun. It was for a friend who died in hospice peacefully after living some time in an assisted living facility. He was old, 84, and had lived a full life and had been active in civil rights and peace issues. One elderly woman, 86, a veteran of the civil rights movement came to the microphone to share some thoughts about our friend. She ended by saying something about the hope that the youth present bring to all of us. I and others looked around and could find only one young adult present, the daughter of the friend who organized the memorial service.

We the people born from 1922–1945 are called Traditional or Silent generation. We and the early Baby boomers generation are getting old, ill and dying off. There is not much we can do about it except take care of our health, live fully and pray for a peaceful death. Someone mentioned they could not find any family or relatives of our friend but he certainly had many friends, be they now old, as evidenced by the good attendance of the memorial service tonight and the light mood of the event.

If I live longer I imagine I will have see many more friends suffer and die. My friend who was just diagnosed with cancer and I joke around with each other and make each other laugh. So today when he told me about cancer I joked around and told him about laughter therapy made famous by Norman Cousins and with good scientific evidence of its effectiveness.

Living in the shadow of death is just normal for most of us elderly persons. But add some humor and laughter into our lives and maybe we stay a little bit healthier and live longer. We can laugh till we die.

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