Sometimes, you have to laugh because if you didn't, you would cry.

In May, my 79-year-old dad went into the hospital for a urinary tract infection. We all thought it would be a quick, in-and-out stay. But one complication led to another and then another. He was transferred to a rehabilitation center, where they could administer his intravenous antibiotics and help him with physical therapy. And now, six weeks later, he's been hospitalized again for another infection (one of those antibiotic-resistant, hospital superbugs that he picked up during his treatment.)

My dad has only two children--me, and my older sister who lives about a four hours away. My mom has borne the brunt of the stress and exhaustion from running back and forth to the hospital or the rehab center, talking to doctors, and trying to source special equipment for him to use when he finally gets the go-ahead to come home. I've also done my share of the work, coming to visit him at dinnertime every day to help him eat because he was so weak, he couldn't get the spoon from his plate to his mouth. My sister has come up twice for the weekend to relieve my Mom and I. Still, it would help if we had about five or six extra siblings in the area.

"Dad," I said one day last week, "You should've had more kids." He laughed, which is rare these days.

On one particular day early on in his hospitalization, my mom, my sister, and I were hanging out in his room when the phlebotomist came in to insert a pic line to help with the IV antibiotics. He made us all wear surgical masks while he worked. I suggested we get a selfie...how many times in your life do you have the opportunity to take a surgical mask selfie? We got one, and it became the fodder for days of future jokes.

"All of my Facebook friends are going to think I got my medical degree."

"Well, we can cross that one off our bucket list!"

"I'm going to wear a surgical mask in all my pictures from now on. Look how it hides my double chin!"

When stress, sadness, and uncertainty are the norm, humor can be your best defense against total emotional defeat.

Humor makes the big looming dreadful thing seem smaller, and less dreadful. Find something to laugh about. Anything.

I tried to have a heart-to-heart with my dad, who, in the middle of his stint at the rehab center, surrounded by cold floors, callous nurses, and truly terrible food, seemed to be losing his determination to live through the ordeal. "You've got a grand opportunity here," I said. "A life extension. If I were you, I'd be reveling in every moment."

Later, he looked over at me and asked, "Am I reveling hard enough?"

Yesterday, I was visiting Dad in the hospital and out of nowhere, he started to cry. My father is not an emotionally-expressive man. I've only seen him cry before on three occasions, all deaths. Perhaps the knowledge that his own death looms ever nearer as he ages was what let loose the floodgates. He cried for hours, and couldn't stop until he fell asleep.

When I asked him why he was crying, he could only say "I miss you guys." I don't think he was referring to the present. We have, after all, been spending even more time with him over the course of the last six weeks than normal, because he needs so much extra care and attention. I think he was talking about some earlier period in his life. Like maybe when we lived in the woods in Franklinton when I was a kid. There are so many happy memories from that time, but at some point, my dad withdrew. Whether due to depression or from disappointment that certain aspects hadn't turned out the way he would've liked, or just due to general curmudgeonliness, I never could tell. He wouldn't talk about it. But yesterday, in his tearful admission, I tasted a flavor of regret.

"It's okay," I said. "I'm right here. We still have time to spend together." This made him cry harder. "You're my favorite," I told him. "Even if you are an old curmudgeon."

Dad said, "I'm your favorite BECAUSE I'm an old curmudgeon." And he laughed through his tears.

"Revel harder," I said.