Smile

My life has not always been easy, but I have chosen to see it as happy.

These were the words uttered by my mother near the end of her life. They have stuck with me for several reasons. Mom was never one to focus on what was not working or the sadness of a situation. She did not believe in regrets or “might have beens”. It was strictly what happened, what was the outcome and then let’s move on. Victims were not her cup of tea and let us not even get started on whiners.

The other part of the statement that got my attention was the word choice. It was a belief and way of life for her. You can choose how you react. You can choose how you feel. You can choose to move on. You can choose to take it personally or you can laugh it off.

Sometimes as a child I would hope for a moment of wallowing with her along for the ride. It is not that she was not empathetic, but rather she did not see the point in creating your own unhappiness. If someone was unkind, rude, judgmental she believed the best approach was to hear what they had to say and then just get on with things. Why defend yourself against someone else’s opinion?

I asked her once how she had come to this philosophy in life. She recounted a story of her oldest brother teasing her about her hair.

“What did you do to your hair?”

“Nothing,” she said smiling thinking a compliment was coming.

“Looks like it!”

She said that in that moment she looked at both of her brothers, one twelve and the other four years older and thought, “They’re not such hot stuff. Why do I care what they think?” And she simply applied that to the rest of her life. That easy. Just get over it.

When you complained about something she would oft reply, “Say it once and don’t say it again.”

If you made the mistake of repeating the complaint, she would look at you with a tinge of pity and a bit of a smirk and say, “It wasn’t that interesting the first time.” The approach worked for me.

Her mantra was always that you can cry about it or laugh about it and laughter is so much more enjoyable. She was right.

Today would have been her 104th birthday and she would have loved that hoping to beat her mother’s mark at 106. She did not make it to 90, but she left us with a gift of the bizarre and a memory book filled with joy, love, adventure and most importantly, laughter.