The situation may be sad and tragic, but don’t be afraid to enjoy funny moments, says Barbara.
Transcript
Probably my last piece of advice for caregivers would be to keep your sense of humour—to not be afraid to laugh and enjoy life. And, not to pay attention of people who think that it’s cruel to laugh at somebody who does something weird because of a medical condition. I mean, if you’re sitting there with an aunt who loves eating chicken wings and she eats all the chicken off her chicken wings, and then takes the bones and stuffs them into the vase in the middle of the table: go with it. Laugh with it. Have fun with it. Yes it’s, at some level sad and tragic, but if you can’t do that, if everything that happens becomes gloom and horrible and frightening, then your body is going to respond that way. And if sometimes you can just sit down and have a good belly laugh—I think they call it black humour when you’re laughing at something that isn’t sort of genuinely funny. But if you don’t do that, you’ll just die within your caregiving experience.
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