True stories – The Power of Smiling

It’s already been a good thirty years since this story took place but I still remember it vividly. We used to have a fairly big garden near the city, where our family grew fruits and vegetables in those days. It had rich, black, “fat” soil – plants loved it and yielded abundant crops almost each year. In spring we brought home radishes, onions, then strawberries, tomatoes and peppers. Summers brought the first harvests of sour cherries and cherries, and luscious apricots also grew in our garden. There were also plenty of melons and marrows, and there was no shortage of apples in autumn either – it was practically heaven on earth.

Uncle Feri, a neighbour, also had bumper crops on his land; his garden perhaps yielded more than those of any of his neighbours and his fruit trees were heavy with fruit every year. He liked gardening – his cream-coloured straw hat appeared here and there all the time: in the raspberry fields or in the sea of sunflowers or elsewhere. His wife kept saying, you only come into the house to eat and sleep.

The garden was his life.

It was only him whom his neighbours asked for advice when they happened to have a problem with any of the cash crops. Uncle Feri always told them about the fastest and most effective solutions for attacks of fungi, mites or plant lice, but he had pruning methods of grapes and the propagation of plants at his fingertips as well. His grandchildren loved him because Uncle Feri’s palms often had for them a couple of chocolate eggs or some cherries in them.

He was a taciturn, quiet and kind man with perhaps not a single negative feature, except that Uncle Feri never smiled. Even in the funniest moments it was rather only his eyes that laughed, not his face. When questioned about his occasional bad temper or grim mood, he replied it was “due to the world war because I saw there a lot of dreadful events”, or that “I’m simply like this”.

One morning, when he was spraying the apple tree, Uncle Feri had a strange feeling somewhere around his stomach, but he did not care much about it. Perhaps I’ve upset my stomach, he thought and went on spraying the tree. A few minutes later, however, he began to feel so dizzy that he had to get down the ladder. He sat on the grass and rested a bit.

“Are you feeling all right, Uncle Feri?” asked a neighbour, Anett, a young mother with a smiling face, who was hanging out the laundry to dry.

“Oh, excellent, my dear, don’t worry, I must have got dizzy from the height,” he replied, but as he had just said it, he felt nauseated.

An unknown, sharp pain shot in his stomach, as if a razor cut it.

Then he felt as if something had been torn apart inside him. He doubled over and started retching: the grass was bloodied. In surprise, he put his hands in front of his mouth – he felt the salty taste and the warmth of his blood, then lay down. He lay on his back and heard Anett shouting something but he was not interested any more. Gaping at the sky, at the fleecy clouds, it occurred to him that he should water the cabbages but had no strength to stand up. This was the last thing he remembered before passing out.

When he came to, the fruit trees, birds, grass, the rake had all disappeared. All colours had disappeared. He was surrounded by white walls, white-clad nurses and wires. And a machine gave annoying, whistling sounds beside him. He sighed, and a thin tear rolled down his cheek.

“He’s woken up,” he heard a well-known voice beside him.

It was his daughter. She was sitting at his bedside with her husband. He also noticed his wife sitting a bit further on the edge of the bed, talking to a doctor, with tears in her eyes. His grandchildren were also there. One of them ran up to him and caressed his hand.

“Granddad!”

“Hi, Julcsi dear,” he groaned. “I’m sorry I have no chocolate eggs with me now.”

“It’s not important, granddad, what’s important is that you recover. You must recover, do you understand?”

“But I’m all right, can’t you see?” he said lifting his hand, patting the child’s face, and winked at her.

“When you come home, you’ll have to mow the lawn as well, because, as you know, you’ve smeared it badly with blood. Bodri the dog wanted to lick it up but I drove him away and…”

“Let granddad have some rest,” her father told her.

Not much later one of the doctors sat beside the bed and told him what kind of examinations they would perform on him. Uncle Feri got concerned. A week later it turned out he had stomach cancer. Uncle Feri could not do much with this fact, his mind revolved around the problem whether his cabbages back home got watered properly. Cabbages require a lot of water at this time of year, he kept saying. His son-in-law assured him his cabbages looked wonderful; what’s more, he took photos of them, wishing Uncle Feri got better too.

However, Uncle Feri’s condition worsened – in spite of the lot of good advice and the expensive wonder doctors invited to see him, the tumour refused to recede. His doctors considered an operation risky because, they said, there was a chance of eighty per cent he could die of it since the cancerous tumour had the size of an egg. It was nearly impossible to remove it safely.

One day Uncle Feri’s daughter read something about how important a patient’s mood is for cancer treatment. In her mind she flipped over his father’s life, at least what she knew of it, and realized he almost never smiled. He was rather melancholic, if not really sad, but definitely nothing like exuberantly cheerful. She decided to introduce “laughter therapy” with her father. She asked all visitors to look at her father with gleeful faces and allowed them to say jokes if they liked.

From then on the ward’s atmosphere changed: it was taken over by joy, fun and high spirits.

Everyone wanted to help: someone learned the 50 best jokes, and his grandchildren performed a funny play to let grandpa laugh at last. Uncle Feri’s daughter even had a big standing mirror brought into the ward and rolled it before her father’s bed. Every day Uncle Feri was obliged to smile at himself for an hour. Laughter heals you, dad.

A month went by in that manner but the tumour did not recede – however, interestingly, it had not grown either. Encouraged by that result, further weeks and months of fun were planned for Uncle

Feri and even a well-known comedian was invited. Uncle Feri burst with laughter and kept saying, it’s this laughter that’ll put me to the grave. But it was not to be.

Uncle Feri left a healthy man after six months, two weeks and five days in the hospital. His tumour had regressed. But the real wonder for him was not his healing, rather that he had learned to smile and laugh again. He smiled at trees, plants, his neighbours… and at life.

To use this site further, the use of cookies must be accepted. More information

Cookie settings are enabled on this site for the best user experience. If the site is used without changing the setting or clicking the "Accept" button, the user accepts the use of the cookies.

Close