An Irishman walks out of a bar. Seriously, it could happen.

In my family, we joke about heart attacks. No, we’re not sadists or masochists or evil in any other way, as far as I know anyhow.  

We’re realists and we’re Irish, which pretty much go hand in hand.  Irish humor can be dark and self-deprecating, even for those of us a generation or two away from our proud, blighted roots.  We take observations to their stark and most profoundly realistic terms.  

For us to be alive today, our ancestors had to have been survivors. Our DNA is rooted in centuries of famine, slavery, poverty, and separation.  

What choice do you have when life is bleak and all you’ve got is hard work, early death, coffin ships, an occasional letter from thousands of miles away? You cry. You joke. You swear. You sing. You find a way to find a way to move forward.   

You get this little gem that my father has been telling for at least forty years. It always makes us grin and roll our eyes at the same time: “Are you reading that paper you’re sitting on?” 

And you get this too, usually in response to doctor and nurse questions: “Nope. No cancer in our family. We do the sudden death thing: strokes, heart attacks.”  We laugh drily and bitterly, then explain. 

Lately though, we don’t respond to the cancer question with that same dark joke.  We explain about cancers in the intestines, cancers in the lung, cancers in the bile duct and pancreas, cancers that we know will absolutely not be going away. We list medicines, tests, names of doctors.  We joke sometimes,  though.

 “How’d the test go?”

“All good!” one says.  

“Nothing’s grown,” says the other.  “They don’t want to see me again ‘til February!”

“Excellent news! Thank God.” That’s me.

“Yup,”  says the other. “Plenty of time for it to grow.” 

Bitter laugh from the one, then the other, then me. Then I say it, or they say it. We've all said it at one time or another these last few months. 

“You never know.”  

We all nod in agreement.  We raise our wine glasses and take a drink. 

 Faith. Hope. Charity.




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