This week I’ve been skimming a book written by Professor Steve Gish called Amy Biehl’s Last Home: A Bright Life, a Tragic Death, and a Journey of Reconciliation in South Africa.
It's about my sister’s brief but incredible life, her death, and the impact both made in the US and South Africa. It’s also a record of the journey that has been my family’s for the last 25 years. Admittedly, the book is painful to read. The facts alone are not easy to process. And, the personal accounts leave me wincing sometimes. But, along with all the hard stuff, there were actually some pretty hilarious moments that happened too. And, while you won’t find them in the book, they have been as vivid for me as some of the ugly ones over the course of this past week. They remind me that laughter is a gift. That we should laugh loud (when appropriate, of course) and often. There was the time for example, when we made our first visit to a township and had had an emotional day with some incredibly beautiful and underserved children. My sister, Kim, and I realized we needed to take a “potty break” and broke free from the children and documentary crew that was with us to find a restroom. We were taking care of business and chatting between ourselves when we realized WE HAD MICROPHONES WIRED THROUGH OUR CLOTHING and probably had just given the sound crew a thing or two to talk about. Then there was the time when the baboons seemed to take a liking to me at the Cape Point lookout, surrounded me, and had me convinced I would never get back to my hotel much less make it home to California. There was also the time my parents were attending the US/South Africa State Dinner at the White House and just minutes before show time, my dad discovered he had brought my brother’s tuxedo and not his own. And a favorite memory was when my mom and I tried to ditch our suit-clad, government-assigned bodyguards by going to a Cape Town beach. They were trailing us everywhere and we thought because they were in business not swim suits, they’d just stay parked in their car rather than follow us onto the beach so as to be less obvious in the crowd. However, turns out they had packed for every occasion and when we looked back to confirm we had ditched them instead saw they were enjoying the rays in their shorts and shades just a few yards behind us! Laughter is healing. It is literally good for you. It calms your cardiovascular system when you are stressed, it decreases your blood pressure, and increases your immunity. A study done on stress and bereavement even shows that grieving spouses who laughed while talking about their loved ones in the months following their deaths were found to be doing better than spouses who did not laugh while recounting stories of their loved ones when all were interviewed 2-4 years later. So, when life feels particularly “serious”, remember laughter can be “seriously” good for you. Most of the time we won’t feel like laughing. But, we should not be ashamed if we do. It could be just the kind of “break” we need. Love, Molly
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