Laughter vs. Suffering

This thought came to me yesterday:  Laughter and suffering are incompatible.  We can laugh and be sad, we can laugh and be frustrated.  We can even laugh and be angry.  But we can't laugh and suffer.  The anti-dote to suffering is laughter.

A few weeks ago, before Ben's surgery, I was at a yoga class when the teacher led us into happy baby pose and asked us all to laugh.  I had heard of laughing yoga before - you go through the motions of laughing, maybe even faking it, until you really feel like laughing.  The idea is that laughing is contagious, once your face is laughing and you hear everyone else laughing, you will laugh from the bottom of your belly and hear.  In that class, I couldn't do it.  I couldn't even fake it.  Or, I tried to fake it and it didn't work.

But now I am able to laugh again.  Ben has been seizure-free since his operation on August 19th.  It's amazing, incredible, an absolute miracle.  The generator was turned on about a week ago.  I am holding my breath, hoping and praying that this will continue.  Ben is engaged and interested in the world around him.  He laughs at funny toys.  He smiles at people he knows and is almost starting to wave.  He is reaching his little arms out for me to pick him up, when he wants to be picked up.  His therapists keep saying that he's a different kid.  But, really, he's always been this kid, it was just hidden behind a fog of static neural activity.  His brain couldn't process the information it was getting.  And he couldn't show us what he was thinking and feeling.

I'm trying hard to enjoy this time because I have no idea how long it will last.  It's a lot of pressure, right?  But I want to savor this seizure-free time and savor the ability to laugh with my children.