Laughter

It took an hour to get from home to high school -- a tedious drive through commuter freeway traffic even though we hit the road at by six o'clock in the morning. For the entire six years we did the drive to that school, we always listened to the Mark & Brian on the radio. Nothing like a couple of wacky morning DJs to start the day off right.

By the time I was a senior in high school, I finally had my driver’s license. Sometimes I was even allowed to make the drive with Annika, who just started going to that school as a seventh grader. One morning, as the two of us crept off the freeway and up the hill into La Jolla, Brian was in the middle of the most terrible impression of Ricky Ricardo. The fact that he sounded nothing like Lucy's husband only made it funnier the longer the bit went on. Before long, we were struggling to catch a breath we were laughing so hard.

It was so much fun to get absorbed into a laughing fit with Annika. Our eyes would go all squinty and our faces would go red. Being sisters, we pretty much shared the same sort of silent, hysterical laughter: lots of rolling backwards and forwards with our mouths wide open, a few strange noises accompanying the combination of gasps for air and uncontrollable stomach muscle contractions, tears shooting out of our eyes and across our faces. If you didn't know we were laughing, you might think we were choking.

Laughter.

What a gift, and Annika knew how to use it as a child. Unrestrained, long and genuine. And contagious enough to last all day or break us out of a sisterly fuss. The gift left her, somewhat, when the cancer treatments showed up. She even said so herself, from time to time, that the chemo might have taken away her sense of humor. Her brain just didn’t function the same way anymore. I'm not convinced she lost her sense of humor altogether -- we certainly shared a few belly laughs as time went on -- but I do know that level of laughter didn't come as effortlessly, nor as often, the longer she lived with pain.

Today, something I heard on the radio that reminded me of the morning where I could barely drive because of our laughter. It’s a memory that only she and I share. It’s a memory that gives me the gift of my little sister: happy and free and pure.