How many men have had their wives forget their anniversary? Oh the drama.
Tim Frodsham, 25 January 2021
While exploring important sites in our church history from New York to Missouri, my family had fallen into a daily routine. I would slip out of the hotel to capture photographs during the golden hour of sunrise; then return around the time my wife and two sons wandered down to the lobby for breakfast. One particular morning, I presented LaNae with a small bouquet of flowers and a gift. I wished her “Happy anniversary.” Though she did not say a word, her facial expressions detailed the following sequence of thoughts:
Oh, a gift, how nice, and flowers, how lovely! ….
Oh, it’s our Anniversary! .
Oh, it’s our anniversary, and he brought me a gift!
Oh, it’s our anniversary, and I forgot… .
Oh no! it’s our anniversary and I forgot!
And the last facial expression was
I forgot our anniversary, and he is never going to let me live this down.
At that point, I added with a twinkle to this otherwise silent, one sided conversation, “You’re right, I won’t.” I have to pause this story, take a deep breath, and savor this moment. How many husbands have had the experience of remembering a wedding anniversary that their wives forgot? In the entire macro cosmic universe, we could probably count them on one hand, and have digits left over. Manna from Heaven, the possibilities are endless.
We returned from that vacation for the last scheduled visit with her oncologist. If LaNae was free of the leukemia that had plagued her for the last four years, she would be declared cured and have no further need of checkup visits. I knew, however that something was wrong. Her decreased energy and vitality would have prompted me to schedule a visit had we not had one on the calendar already. The fact that she had forgotten our wedding anniversary was clearly another indicator that something was wrong (at least that was her excuse).
At that visit we learned that the leukemia had returned in full force, and in addition, she had advanced ovarian cancer as well as a cancerous growth on one of her kidneys. Unfortunately, the cancers were unrelated as were the chemotherapy treatments to combat them. As her doctors treated her leukemia, the ovarian cancer raged out of control.
While they were treating the ovarian cancer, the leukemia advanced, further compromising her immune system and her ability to tolerate chemotherapy treatments. We endured numerous hospital and doctor visits: draining fluid from her abdomen and lung cavities, blood transfusions, visits for boils, shingles and other complications caused by her compromised immune system. Eleven months after our church history vacation, she succumbed.
Two weeks after her death was our thirty-seventh wedding anniversary. One year after our previous and rather humorous anniversary escapade. In a rather melancholy mood, I wandered out to our mailbox. In it was an official looking letter from the state of Oregon containing copies of my wife’s death certificate.
In this moment, I could have broken down in tears, justifiably so, or I could see the humor in the situation. I looked up to the heavens and exclaimed with a laugh, “You redheaded hussy, what you went through just to get the last word. All of this drama simply because you forgot our anniversary.”
Through this and other tense situations as our family coped with the loss of a wife and mother, we used humor to ease the sting of grief and regret. “Humor is indeed a danger to human pretentions, to hypocrisy, to vanity, and thus a danger to all of us…humor is a threat to our pride, for it is an occasional reminder that the sure and firm set earth upon which we tread can shake and tumble at any moment”1. At that time, the earth beneath me was indeed tumbling.
I would not have survived the years of her illness and those since her death without looking at my situation and the situation of my family through a lens of laughter. For example, while preparing LaNae for burial, LaNae’s sister and daughter had clothed her, and we were ready to put her in her casket. LaNae wanted to be buried with her temple recommend tucked in her shoe; she specifically had her recommend renewed just a few months before she passed away.
I handed my daughter the recommend and she carefully slipped it under her right foot. I remarked, “Well, she had better be resurrected within the next two years, or that recommend will expire and she won’t be able to get in.” Humor is a gift from God, one that we can use to diffuse the most intense family situations; look at ourselves with new perspective; see and feel our troubles in a more humble context. If we turn to Proverbs, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine”(Proverbs 17:22).
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints expounds on this concept, “Good humor truly is medicine to the soul. Humor can ease tension, relieve uncomfortable or embarrassing situations, change attitudes, generate love and understanding, and add sparkle to life. A properly developed sense of humor is sensitive to others’ feelings and is flavored with kindness and understanding” 2.
Peter Rawlins puts this in the perspective of those who are sorrowing: “The suffering, the discouraged, and those who mourn can be cheered through humor. Thus, it becomes a means of fulfilling our commitment to ‘comfort those that stand in need of comfort’ (Mosiah 18:9.)” 3.
Humor, like all gifts, can be misused, as again stated by Peter Rawlins: “To avoid using humor as a dangerous weapon, we must be compassionately considerate of all that is frail, and humbly mindful of all that is sublime. Would it not be better to ‘lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees’ (D&C 81:5) than to humiliate and disgrace one of our neighbors?” 3.
In this rather unique year of 2020, a well developed and artful sense of humor is particularly cogent. “One must have a sense of humor to be an optimist in times like these” 4. He was correct then, and is correct now.
Marjorie Hinkley used effective humor in her family life. “Another thing that we tried to do is not take ourselves too seriously. You get into a lot of trouble when you do that. I tried to laugh instead of cry when you felt like crying. It was always better to laugh,[like] the day I took a beautiful casserole from the oven and my six-year-old boy said, ‘Mom, how come you baked the garbage?’ Children are like that. There are days when it is hard to laugh” 5.
James E Faust stated: “By learning not to be afraid to laugh at oneself, one is able to stir up the kindred feelings of others. Under the cultivation of the Holy Ghost the talents will be greatly magnified” 6. He then went on to quote Thomas Carlyle: “True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt. Its essence is love. Its issue is not in laughter, but in still smiles which lie far deeper” 7. James E Faust referred to humor as “a refining of the heart” 6.
Faith and humor go hand-in-hand. At times our family uses a rough and tumble sort of humor that may be construed by those on the outside as rather impudent. It is exactly the opposite. A true spirit of comradery is based on faith and trust. Faith in each other, and trust that each would never intentionally say or do anything to hurt or demean. In the article mentioned above, Elder Faust also quoted George Barrell Cheever: “For health and the constant enjoyment of life, give me a keen and ever-present sense of humor. It is the next best thing to an abiding faith in providence” 7.
I find it telling that in a tense situation when mistrust abounds, the first layer of civility to be abandoned is a sense of humor. No one dares use humor for fear of being misunderstood, misquoted and adding further fuel to the pyre. Mistrust abounds and each is looking for reason to take offense, referred to in the scriptures: “That make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of nought” (Isaiah 29:21). In this last crisis, politically charged and humorless year have we seen even the most powerful turn aside that which is just and reasonable for a thing of nought.
That we used humor to help us through the most difficult times of our lives does not mean that we did not understand and appreciate reverence and devotion. There is a time for solemnity, reverence and somber reflection on all that is good and right and true in this world we inhabit. I thank God every day that there is also, “a time to laugh”. (Ecclesiastes 3:4).
- Richard H Cracroft, “A Time for Laughter,” BYU speeches, 1982
- Peter B. Rawlins, “A Serious Look at Humor” churchofjesuschrist.org
- Hugh B Brown, “The Abundant Life”
- Marjorie Pay Hinckley, BYU Women’s Conference, 2 May 1996
- James E Faust, “An Even Balance”, Speeches.byu.edu
- Dictionary of Thoughts, 1969
Copyright 2021, Tim Frodsham, latterdaysaints.life
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