Tickled by Joy

My grandfather could be quite serious. Whenever we met, he had a tendency to open the conversation with an obituary monologue, recalling the recent deaths of people I was supposed to know (but never did) and the various tragedies their families had been through in the preceding half century or so. It was difficult to know how to reply when I was 12. Sympathetic nodding seemed to go down well but was taken as a sign of encouragement as my grandfather reeled off the name of yet another person who had died without me ever knowing that they had lived.

Probably my grandfather was at a stage in life when it was getting difficult to live in the present moment. Obituaries were interesting but they were a constant reminder of life slowing down and slipping away; they rendered the past more relevant than the present. 

I don't read obituaries like my grandfather did and I definitely don't recite them. Perhaps that day is coming. However, I often do struggle to live in the present moment and have an almost melancholic attachment to inaccessible days long gone.

One day my grandfather was reading his newspaper when a Laurel and Hardy film came on the TV. It was Way Out West, a comedy western that came out just about the time my dad was born and which I have loved ever since I first saw it. 'Eee, they were daft them two,' said my granddad, putting down his newspaper.The film sucked us both in as the comedy and the drama built up. By the time we got to the part where one of the baddies was trying to get the deed to a gold mine from Stan by tickling him we were laughing with abandon. My granddad slapped the arm of his chair and laughed with an intensity that threatened to dislodge false teeth. We were both living in the moment and doing it with joy; it was a time of real connection and meaning that was simply not possible through conversation. Over thirty years later this scene manages to simultaneously help me live in the moment and take me back to the people I have enjoyed it with. It always makes me smile.


If viewing on mobile device, view the scene at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w19mNH3wHp0

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