“Getting older son, is not for the faint of heart.” I’ve never forgotten my father’s words to me. He wasn’t feeling sorry for himself and he wan’t seeking pity. He was a soldier and was just reciting a statement of fact, as he understood it.

Well actually, when you think about it getting older is for the faint of heart! It’s exactly what getting older is all about. Although, that’s just being cheeky, something my father would not have appreciated. My dad was not given to exaggeration, no more ‘straight forward, look you in the eye, tell you what he thought’ man have I ever known. He was a good man, born into a generation who went off to war at the age of eighteen returning six years later, changed. He had reason to be bitter and angry through it all. I can’t say I wouldn’t have been had I lived his life. But he wasn’t. Through to his dying days he lived his life square to the wind, taking it all in stride, bravely and with humour. With humour.

I’ll never forget the first time I heard my father saying it though. Turns out he was a wise old owl after all. Sure got my attention. What did I know, I was forty-four years old? Wet behind the ears! It felt like some old mariners warning about rough weather ahead. And what’s worse it appeared, if I was hearing my father correctly, no course correction was available. He seemed to be saying, no navigational adjustment would avoid this ‘rough weather’ of which he spoke.

So now, nearly thirty years on, it is safe to say I am steaming through these very same ‘rough waters’ about which dad was warning me. I need to say this right off the top. I don’t know much about anything. I don’t enjoy any particular navigational wisdoms, never have. If I did I surely to God would have used them to avoid some of my more memorable ‘car crashes’. No, I am just an ordinary man, still blessed with a reasonable capacity to think for myself with which I chart my course through the waters ahead. I know, I’m not in complete control of the course and that the journey at some point will be stormy but right now, in this moment, I’m good to go.

I’ve always had the ability to be a miserable old prick! I always loved a good argument and I lived with visibility. Each of my four children will recall me saying, ‘Stand up for something from time to time. Or stand for nothing.‘ I still think that. So from time to time, I drew ‘heat’, not necessarily the good heat, the comforting warming kind of heat. No, this was more like the scalding kind of heat I’m talking about. But that’s okay, it’s kind of how I wanted it. But now that I’m seventy-two my appetite has changed. I’ve become less opinionated and more observational and in those observations I have realized one thing: We are funny. And the older we get the funnier we are. For me, it helps. It helps me navigate the choppy seas and rough water my father warned me about so long ago. And that surely is what our sense of humour is for, to be used as a salve, something to give us comfort and respite. Without humour I’m simply left with sore knees, declining health and ever diminishing prospects for a long life. Some combination of meds and laughter is my prescription. Controlled meds, endless amounts of laughter.

“You know you’re getting old when you bend over to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.” George Burns

I mean let’s face it, the arithmetic sucks. And I don’t know about any of you but I didn’t give the ‘arithmetic’ no never mind until I was older. Turns out eighty-five (my life expectancy) minus my actual age (seventy-two) is 13! That must be what WTF! is for. I mean I love living, I have no time for this whole dying thing but I suppose you might say I’m pissing into the wind. Well I am, and it’s not the first time. It’s likely not the last time either but I know I’m not the only one.

Right now ageing appears to be the only available way to live a long life, although the cavalry may be on its way. Jeff Bezos is investing several of his billions of dollars in a company researching longevity, convinced as he is that living to one hundred and thirty years of age is a realistic scientific goal. No kidding, of course it is. One hundred years ago my life expectancy was fifty-five, now it’s eighty-five. Do the trend line. In fact, if this is read fifty years from now, that future person may well mock me for being so short sighted,

“Hey get a load of this guy. Back in 2022 this dude thought it could be possible to live until one hundred and thirty years of age. That’s funny! What do you want to do for your one hundred and fiftieth birthday honey? It’s a big one.”

But here’s my problem. All of that is above my pay grade and it is 2022. So while I am able, I am resolved to use humour as much as I can. It’s not medical science but then again I’m not a doctor. It is just what I can bring to the fight.

In the summer of 2020 I received a Telegram from the Dark Side, at least that’s what I came to call it, once the dust had settled. The short version is that one morning out of nowhere I had a frightening episode, something they call Transient Global Amnesia, let’s say TGA going forward. Google it, it’s a thing. The Cole’s notes? It mimics a stroke (see how I did the cross generational references, Cole’s and Google). It was early one morning and I had just finished sending some radio voice work to my producer. When my wife Mac came to find me I was sitting looking nowhere in particular with a very ‘spaced out’ look in my eye. She’s a nurse and thought immediately that I was having a stroke. My son Toby is a firefighter, a first responder and he thought the same thing; my symptoms classically mimicked a stroke. So, they rushed me to the Nanaimo General Hospital. Within a few minutes (I’m told all of this because to this day I have no recollection of this part of the event), I was being examined by an emergency room doctor. He had me count back from one hundred in sevens, move my limbs on command and he engaged me in conversation (so I am told). He sent me for a CAT scan and spoke to my wife, who by this time thought our lives, going forward, had changed forever. When I returned the doctor said to Mac,

“I don’t think it’s a stroke, it’s TGA.”

“TGA?” asked Mac, “I’ve been a nurse for nearly forty years, I’ve never heard of TGA.”

“I know” said the doc, “It’s rare but it happens to men Tony’s age sometimes. It’s not a stroke it’s called Transient Global Amnesia.”

“Is there any damage?”

“No, none at all. These things come and go in a few hours.”

Mac was thrilled. She was certain I’d had a stroke and we would be leaving that hospital to a very different reality.

“So we should get a follow up neurological?”

“Can if you want” said the doc, “but it’s not needed.”

So I have no memory of any of this, all of this I’ve been told, so you’ll understand if it lacks for detail. But I’ll never forget my very first recollection after the TGA.

“Here let me take that off your face” the doctor spoke to me and reached over to remove a red face mask I had worn into the hospital (it was the Time of Covid and one of the requirements), “It’s not right to wear your wife’s underwear on your face in here.”

And there it was. Humour. I do recall laughing out loud. In that moment, in that place, that was funny. Perhaps the doctor was testing me to see if I had a sense of humour, to see if I was ‘present’ again or perhaps he just knew the power of humour to help patients under stress. In any event, it worked and for me it remains as good an example of just how important laughter is.

Now I have read as much as I can about humour and laughter. My youngest granddaughter Rowe is just five months old as I write. Absolutely adorable BTW. And she laughs. She laughs a real ‘now that’s funny’ laugh and not just from obvious physical stimulation like tickling. Rowe laughs out loud, a real giggle, at funny faces and classic games like Peek a Boo. And of course I’m not suggesting Rowe is special or gifted although she is of course. All babies laugh and they do so as much as a year before they talk. So what is it about laughing. There is no doubt in my mind that she is communicating, her sense of humour developed way ahead of other communications skills. And that makes sense to me. Humans use humour and laughter to connect with one another from the earliest age, communicating a sense of safety and relationship and trust and belonging, the simple sound giving comfort to an anxious young parent. It is not a learned behaviour, it is as though we come with the laughter ‘app’ embedded. Birth to death humans use humour to help ourselves along the path.

My great friend David Larsen fought cancer for over four years and did so with a strength I doubt I could muster were it me. He did so with dignity and a sense of privacy, relying on his faith, his family and his sense of humour to see him through the worst of it. I remember how he would go off to the BC Cancer Agency each morning after our radio show on K963 in Kelowna for continuing treatment, part of a study on beam radiation which drew oncologists and researchers from around the world to Kelowna. He would leave me in stitches recounting his experiences meeting these doctors, all of them eminent physicians in their own country. He would be introduced to them as they entered the room where most procedures were carried out.

“This is Dr. Ahmet Jarpour from Mumbai.”

“Good Morning Sir. How are you today?”

“Oh fine, you know, in the circumstances.” came his reply.

“And Dr. Hamish Stuart from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.”

“Good Day Sir, and how are you doing?”

“Well, meeting a lot of people as it turns out, in an unusual place.” my friend would say, trying to summon the understated politeness the moment would seem to require. His storytelling was fit for SNL, his infectious laugh in the telling always giving me comfort.

My friend Gary Benson died this year after his own battle with cancer. He was a bright, friendly disarming man and extremely accomplished but a man without airs, without any pretense. Gary was the senior partner in a prestigious Kelowna law firm and I was doing some marketing work for him and texting early one morning to get some instructions. He replied within a couple of minutes.

“Hi Tony, hope you’re well. Say look this may have to wait a couple of weeks. I’m late for a thing at the hospital this morning. I’m having my lung out today.”

It turns out that everything had happened very quickly. Diagnosis to surgery with no time to think. Just do. It was a stunning text to receive on every level. It was glib and droll and it was funny, in that moment. I knew that Gary was using humour to ‘spit at the Devil’, to steal himself for what lay ahead. It’s what it is for. That and just feeling better, something to do with drawing vast amounts of oxygen into our brains in a short period of time results in either laughter or hyper ventilation. One good, one bad.

We have a summer place in Deep Bay on Vancouver Island. It’s a humble adobe but a magnificent escape for those of us lucky enough to spend our summer months there. Most of our neighbours are seventy plus and if there was a place where humour thrives it is at the Deep Bay RV Park in Bowser BC. Think of ‘Schitt’s Creek meets a seniors seaside park‘. One of our neighbours is Bob Butler. He and his wife Jodi welcomed us with open arms when we first arrived telling us “if the campfire is on, you’re welcome to come over”. Little did we know that Bob and Jodi’s campfire is always on and we have spent many, many hours around that campfire each summer, telling stories and laughing. Always laughing. It feels healthy because it is healthy. I nicknamed Bob ‘Stand Up’ and for good reason. He loves his pot and he would always stand up around their campfire, all lit up, regaling his guests with tales from his glory years. And he is funny, always cooking something up. Literally. He had a smoker, two barbecues, an outdoor kitchen and pot, lots and lots of pot. In fact, he was a pot smoker from way back, preferring the generational baby boomer distrust of government, always hiding his joints in the palm of his left hand, notwithstanding pot had been legalized years earlier, the burn marks on the palm of his hand the scarred testament.

“Hey Stand Up!”

‘What Tony?”

“You know pot is legal now. You don’t need to hide the joint in the palm of your hand anymore.”

“Yeh Tony, I know” he replied with that ever present Bobby smile, a laugh gathering in his chest, “but I just can’t get used to it.” And out it came, all coiled and ready he laughed out loud. See, here’s the thing. Bob gets it. He understands, quite apart from whatever is going to get him eventually that humour and laughter make a huge difference, every day, to that voyage.

Humour may not make any difference in how long we live but without any doubt it makes our lives different. So, I could go on but at some point that would just get tedious for you, if. it has not done so already. Besides if you don’t agree by now you may just be a member of the Lost Tribe of Miserable Old Pricks and lost to my thesis long ago. So it’s time for the last word.

And my last word turns out, is not actually my last word at all. It belongs to a great Irish playwright. Seems he was a wise old owl too.

“You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.” George Bernard Shaw

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Updated Dec. 30, 2022