Stitch earned his nickname as a boy because he had a knack for making people laugh. Later, after a divorce, he went bankrupt, and those who knew him expected that he would lose his zest for life. But he hasn’t, and still jokes about everything.
His current favorite theme is marriage and money. At a party thrown by his friends in honor of his father, Stitch says: “There are two kinds of people, those who marry for money and those who divorce for money! … Oh! That still makes only one kind of people!”
“I’ll marry you for money,” Kate says, “who’s got a buck?”
Kate is just back from Australia. When she introduces herself, everyone thinks her name is ‘Kite.’
Andy is Stitch’s neighbor. He asks him: “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“How do you do it? Laugh everything away.”
“Oh! That!”
Stitch remains silent a moment. It’s not that he is prone to introspection, or that he wants to find a profoundly funny response. It’s just that the expression Andy used ‘laugh everything away’ is the exact expression his father used sarcastically when he was a kid and his father wanted him to be serious. Stitch never really laughed that out. He pretended, when he was a kid. He poked his dad about it. He would say: “Dad, why do you have to take everything so seriously?” But there’s no more pretending. Not anymore, because his Dad just passed away. He called Stitch to his deathbed last week. The first thing he told him was: “Son, I knew you would never amount to anything. Divorced and bankrupt, you’re a disgrace to the family. I fault myself for it. I should have never let you get away with laughing everything away like you did.”
“As I recall, Dad, you pounded on me almost daily with your comments about needing to be more serious. What else could you have done?”
“I could have sent you to a boarding school. I could have sent you to the army. Living is a serious business … if you want to succeed at anything. But, obviously, you don’t.”
There was a fierce look on his face.
“You know why I made jokes of everything, Dad?” Stitch asked him rhetorically. “It’s because I never saw you laugh. When I was a kid, my greatest wish was to see you laugh. Why don’t you ever laugh, Dad?”
“I told you, life is a serious business.”
“That’s what you used to say, but, you know, I never bought it. What makes you say that?”
“When you live through the war, Stitch, you know what I’m saying is true. There are people at war somewhere all the time. How can you sit here and laugh when people are killed, raped, and families are torn apart by death, destruction and poverty?”
“Do you think that’s what life is meant to be? To me, it’s meant to be a celebration of people coming together. That’s why I laugh.”
“Who’s going to think about those who suffer, Stitch? Who’s going to respond to the enemy I saw laughing at my friend when a grenade landed at his feet and sent him flying in pieces of flesh everywhere?”
“Where’s your friend now, Dad?”
“He’s in the dirt; in pieces that could never be put back together … that’s all I know.”
“Are you afraid of dying, Dad?”
“Afraid?” he moaned. “If there’s a God, life is an obscene farce!” And he chuckled at his own words, and the chuckles took somewhat of a rhythm, and became a laugh, a full belly laugh. His face had relaxed at first, and then became tense with a series of coughs.
Stitch had never seen his dad laugh so heartily. He did not quite know whether to be alarmed and call a doctor about the coughs, or celebrate the gift he had finally received after all these years. Then his dad had a raspy breath and then nothing. That was it. That’s how he said goodbye.
Breaking out of his reverie, Stitch says to Andy: “Dad used to say that to me when I was a kid.”
“What?”
“What you said, ‘laugh everything away.’”
“When Dad died a few days ago, he was laughing at God or laughing death away, I don’t know which. I’d never seen him laugh before. It was because he saw the enemy laugh at the way his friend died during the war. He could never laugh after that. That convinced him that life was ‘a serious business.’”
“I’ve never seen you this serious.”
“I am in awe at the simplicity of it all and the pain it caused. The way Dad made up his mind about it. I never knew. And then the way he tried to make me see life his way. But I never bought it, you know? I’m glad I had that last chat with him. I’m glad I saw him die laughing.”
Andy filled his glass with champagne. “Everyone, I’d like your attention. Fill your glass with champagne or juice. I’m going to make a toast.”
He waits a moment and when everyone is ready. He starts talking. “Here’s a toast to life and a toast to death. Stitch saw his dad pass away a few days ago. It was death that brought them back together. It was death that helped Stitch receive his last gift from him, a gift he had given up on, his father’s laugh. May we each be so blessed in our lives and may everyone be so lucky to count Stitch as a friend, to be touched by his lightness and joy for life. Here’s to you Stitch! And here's to you Kite!”
Kate finds Stitch and tells him: “No one would give me a buck to marry you. I may have to marry you for something else than money.”
Stitch gives Kate a long hug: “I’m glad you came back. I love you too, Sis.”