You are probably wondering where I got the title for this week’s blog. My husband’s dad. “I'm off to the Jelly Bums” was his way of saying he was going to work. What a joyful spirit that man had. He worked twelve-hour days, seven days a week for many years, but he left with a smile on his face, stopped by his mother’s house on the way home for a short visit, then came home with the smile still on his face. It wasn’t the daily grind to him; he was off to the Jelly Bums. Or maybe it was the daily grind, but he chose to make it a joyful thing. Almost like, instead of going to sit in a noisy, jerky monster train in a position that twisted his back over time, he was going off to play Candyland all day.
I had no idea what the Jelly Bums were, but it always sounded fun to me. While typing this up, out of curiosity and with the modern ability to do so, I googled them and got intestinal jelly (mucous), a guy with a vlog, and yarn-crocheted, cute, stuffed animals. You know I am going with the cute stuffed animals. However, I am not sure any of these real options answer why Bill used this term to go to work. He was not a mucousy/slimy kind of guy, it was way before vlogs, so except perhaps the cute stuffies…? Maybe he saw work as a field full of stuffed animals. Or maybe he felt he worked with a bunch of stuffed animals? For sure he was wanting to see the humorous side of life. Bill memorized silly limericks and had that sunny disposition, so definitely the stuffies! He was a hard-working, kind, happy-go-lucky man, making the best of life. And he certainly had a quirky sense of humor, so Jelly Bums stuffed animals sounds about right to me.
After we retire, some of us feel worthless because we can’t do much anymore – we have no sense of purpose. About seven years after his open-heart surgery, Bill became depressed (this is apparently a side effect with open-heart surgery patients), and it was hard to watch this joyful man scaling down into depression. I remember taking him with us to put flowers in the cemetery pots one year and him saying something about that’s where he should be. NOT happy. It was hard to see. Especially as he was the guy who lightened everyone else’s mood. He took a couple trips to the neighboring hospital’s psych ward when he was especially down, and it did him a world of good – because he liked people and he had everyone else in the ward happy by the time he left.
Well, I got onto an unreserved {TANGENT ALERT!!!}! I was going to write about how working helps in so many ways…and maybe I did inadvertently. Perhaps I'll try again another day. For now, go through life with a smile on your face. If you don’t need it, someone you meet might!
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