Have you heard this one?

A doctor walks into the room and says to his patient, “I’m sorry Mrs Smith, but your test results are back. I have some bad news and some more bad news.”

“Oh, ok. So what’s the bad news?”

“Well, the bad news is that you have cancer.”

“And the more bad news?”

“You also have Alzheimer’s disease.”

Long pause . . .

Then Mrs Smith says, “Well, at least I don’t have cancer.”

I know, I know. It’s a terrible joke. I heard it on a television show, and for some reason I decided to tell it to my mum. She is a cancer survivor who has just been diagnosed with dementia. And she laughed—a lot. So it must be funny, right?

Perhaps this joke was my way of trying to cope with my mother’s illness by using humour. It was better than my initial reaction, which was just overwhelming sadness and worry. Then I told myself, quite sternly, to stop it. All that unrestrained grief was not helping me. It certainly wasn’t helping my mother. And it was wreaking havoc with my sinuses.

So instead I now focus on the practical things I can do to help and I try to keep things light hearted. But this joke also gives me hope, in a strange way. Forgetfulness can sometimes be a good thing, if what we lose is the hurt and the pain that stop us enjoying the moment. Of course, my mother has no choice over what she will forget, but I do. I hope that I can let go of my expectations of what life should look like, accept things the way they are, and hold on to enough happy memories for both of us.

And sometimes I’m not laughing at the joke, I’m laughing with the joke. I like to imagine that Mrs Smith might be making a jest of her own, pretending to forget, waiting to see the look of dismay on the doctor’s face before saying, “Gotcha!” with a wicked grin. I like to think that my mother might be like her—defiant and mischievous, no matter what. And I hope that I can be there to support that spirit.

Because while it’s true that our memories make us who we are, we also have the power to make our memories what we want them to be. So I smile. And I hope.