Yesterday, at the tail end of our fourth event of the day and our 70th in the last month and a half, with people laughing and dancing to Earth, Wind & Fire, people who the company told us might be too depressed to participate, a young woman’s voice broke the festive mood. “What...
Let me first acknowledge that families are facing much worse challenges in the pandemic than snoring. When you can’t breathe on your own, snoring could feel like a victory. But when you’re sleeping in the same bed with someone for over 20 years, someone you are now spending 24 hours a day...
In November it will be two years since I had the idea to hire a comedian to cheer my mother up. For those of you visiting Laughter On Call for the first time, I had moved her to Los Angeles near me from New York City because Alzheimer’s was getting the better...
Some might argue we’re a motley crew. Ranging in age from 30 to 93, in t-shirts, unshaven with unkempt hair, we meet Monday through Friday at noon, following the lead of our in house “comedy care” expert instructing us to breathe deeply, make funny faces and, depending on whatever comedy principal we...
Hello to all our isolated friends. We have arrived at week three of staying safe, social distancing and creating laughter from where ever we are. There is no original way to write this, these are crazy times. It’s not so bad quarantining in the house with my family, I know I’m one...
The shaky hand, the labored breathing when she sleeps in her wheelchair, her shrinking body nourished mostly by vanilla ice cream: as we move into the eighth year that my mother’s brain is being ravaged by Alzheimer’s disease, none of it seems like a gift. And yet. Sometimes when she looks straight...
“Thank you,” my mother said to me a few weeks ago as I pulled my face away from hers, having just given her kisses, one on each cheek. I didn’t know I’d be blinking back tears, but there they were. Happens to me a lot now. I’m fine, I’m fine, and…tears. So...
Because Alzheimer's is sad. Very *&^*% sad. Not what you’d expect to hear from someone who created a company that hires comedians to use their talent to make people with Alzheimer’s, their caregivers, and their families laugh. And yet, every time I visit my mother, now in the late stage of the disease,...
“A person is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s every 65 seconds now,” Yael Wyte said to me the other morning over coffee. She’s a geriatric social worker who, among many responsibilities, runs support groups for the Alzheimer’s Association of Los Angeles so she should know. “No, I didn’t know that.” I responded, stuffing a muffin...
Happy 4th of July my friends! Funny how lyrics can resonate differently depending on where you are in your life. I have been thinking a lot about bravery, more specifically courage, these last few months. So much so that you may have noticed we changed the tag line for Laughter On Call from “Hope....