Elder Maze: Keep on keepin’ on with humor

‘Alice,” an 84-year-old church friend, initiated me into the “Keep On Keepin’ On Klub.” My lifetime membership certificate is on my office wall.

The KOKOK Bylaws are simple: 1) No meetings; 2) No dues; 3) No signature required; 4) No tests; 5) Just do it! (Keep on Keepin’ on, that is.)

Alice is the 24/7 caregiver for her husband, who has moderate dementia. She founded KOKOK because she has a healthy attitude, and she wants others to have a similar attitude about what they must deal with in life.

One reason her attitude is so healthy is because of her delightful sense of humor. She always elevates our conversations with some silliness. She freely tosses off one-liners like she’ll never run out of them. Some are recycled. Some are original.

“Rev, I like your columns so much I even read them before doing the crossword puzzle,” she tells me.

Alice’s one-liners tell me how she copes with life and tries to enjoy it. I love her for how she uses humor to live more completely.

Healthy humor takes many forms – one-liners, stories, puns, self-deprecating comments, subtle observations with a comic twist. Whatever form her humor takes, my friend uses what I call “go-away-closer” humor.

It is humor that is whimsically contradictory. With go-away-closer humor, we can keep fears at a reasonable distance even as we embrace those fears just enough to learn we can stand up to them in transforming ways.

Aging is one of those fears. We fear our own aging process in sometimes bizarre ways. Take a moment to think about the ways you play dodgeball with your own time clock.

For instance: I suggest you are no longer a kid when you scratch your head at how young your doctor is; or you begin a sentence by saying, “When I was your age …”; or you browse the bran cereal section of the grocery store.

We also fear our parents’ getting older. One day, we see Mom or Dad has gotten grayer or slower in gait. And it all happened overnight!

Laughing at our denial is a great way to both embrace our fears and keep them at the distance we need to deal with them.

One of the ways I deal with my own aging is to call humor about aging issues “geezer humor.”

I may offend some by using the word “geezer.” But with all due respect, I think it’s a great word.

It comes from a Scottish word “guiser,” which means “one in disguise.”

I think of a geezer as anyone who is disguised as an older person on the outside but is still full of spirit on the inside. Geezer humor is a significant reminder that an elder’s spirit is still fresh and vital even when his body may be in decline.

Today, I want to you find some way to laugh at your life circumstances just enough to help you remember to stay in balance with the rest of what you are blessed you with.

Healthy humor is one of the last things some elders can embrace as their own after they’ve lost control of so many other factors in their lives. To face the things we fear the most with humor has both a dignity and defiance all its own.

As I think about my elder friend who began the Keep On Keepin’ On Klub, I also admire her as she meets the challenge to care for her husband. I’m reminded of a mischievous twist on The Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the Senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.”