This is the memory that this prompt had me revisiting.
My youngest brother picked me up from the bus station.
He was in the process of moving back home to help our mother.
My father wasn’t doing too well and was in fact the reason for my visit. It had been several months since I had last seen him, so I didn’t have a visual on how he was truly doing. He had been in and out of the hospital a few times in the past year but, again, I hadn’t seen him since the previous Christmas, and because of not having had access to a visual, I was determined to continue entertaining optimism.
At one point during the drive to the house, my brother mentioned that our father hadn’t eaten for a few days. I expressed my surprise at this. Earlier, when I had spoken to my mother over the phone, she specifically said my brother had given him some, “muffin.” When I brought this up, he looked at me and said, “Muffin? I didn’t give him any muffin.”
Sticking to my story, I repeated, “She said, earlier today, you gave him some muffin.”
After a few seconds of silence, he shook his head, did a camera take to the heavens and started to laugh.
Wanting in on the joke, “What? What’s so funny?” I asked.
Still laughing, he looked at me and said, “Morphine.”
What had sounded like, ‘muffin’ to me, was actually, ‘morphine.’ Sometimes, with certain words, my mother’s accent can give it a different meaning. Case in point.
And so, we cracked up.
And I needed and appreciated it.
It felt so good to be gifted with that moment and join in with him on that laugh. It felt just as wonderful to share that laugh in a later conversation with our other brother who, at the time, was also en route. It's a perfect memory for what turned out to be such a life changing time.
It’s the only memory of laughter I can connect to that visit.