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Excerpt from The Courage to Laugh:

While I was writing this book, my dad died. New Year’s Eve 1996, he was taken to the hospital. Nine days later, just hours after my mom called to tell me that he was looking better, my dad was no longer alive. After a frantic phone call to book a flight and only two hours of sleep, I got on a plane that took me from my California home to my mom’s condo in Florida and to the funeral.

I managed to hold back my tears until I was on the plane. There, however, amidst business men using telephones and the click of laptops, I sat sobbing.

So here I was, I thought, writing about humor and death while my dad died. The universe was testing me to see if I could find anything funny in the situation and I was failing. I found nothing to laugh about as the shock of his death washed over me. Nothing funny that is, until the flight attendant shoved a cup of hot liquid under my nose and demanded, Here. Drink this. guarantee it will help.

What is it?, I asked.

Coffee and Bailey’s Irish Creme, he said.

That’s when my tears mingled with laughter. First of all, it was seven o’clock in the morning not exactly cocktail hour. Second, I laughed because I never drink coffee and, since I am lactose intolerant, I avoid dairy products, especially cream.

I refused the attendant’s grief-relief remedy but there was something special about it anyway. The comic irony of it all made me laugh not a laugh big enough to completely stop the tears but an inner laugh that felt comfortable and whispered that everything would be all right.

Then I had another cosmic chuckle. I realized that I was just handed the opening words for this book.

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