“I have identical testicles.”

Now that I have your attention — those words were written on a bumper sticker. In truth, the car was so dirty, and the sticker so old, it could have said almost anything. 

But to my mother’s eye, there was little doubt that the dude driving had a matched set.

It was over three decades ago. I was driving my mum to a Boston hospital for an outpatient procedure. She had spots on her lungs and the doctor wanted to take a biopsy. I later learned she had not been forthcoming in terms of the severity of her condition.

The plan was, I would drive her to the hospital in the morning and pick her up in the afternoon. She never left the hospital alive. 

Occasionally, I glanced over and saw her grimace. I knew better than to ask her if she was OK. We Catholics have been raised to allow others to suffer in silence. Though she downplayed her illness, I would often see her flinch with pain, and her coughing gave me chills. I accelerated up to the next light.

The car was filled with fear and silence. The quiet was broken with my mother saying, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Will you look at that?” I followed her gaze to a brown, beat-up, old car that had endured too many Boston winters. 

“Jeffrey, get closer to that brown heap.” 

I pulled closer as my mum reached into her handbag and switched her eyeglasses. She began to laugh and said, “Will you look at what that damn fool has written on his bumper.” She told me what she thought it said. I knew she was wrong, but let her believe.

Actually, I knew it was an old promotion of an octopus exhibit at a Boston aquarium. Originally it featured a sketch of an octopus with the play on words, ‘I have identical tentacles’. 

But I pretended to see it as she did.

We began to laugh hysterically. The fear and stress seemed to vent out the windows like the smoke from my mother’s menthol cigarette. I was willing to enjoy the moment and move on, but my mother needed more information.

“Catch that car. I want to get a better look at him.”

I pretended to do just that but was reluctant to get close for fear that my mother would realize she had misread the message.

For the next 10 minutes I pretended to chase the brown car through traffic while my Mum and I were laughing like children. We enjoyed wild speculation about the source of the gentleman’s assertion, and wondered how he could be so certain.

The irony was not lost on me — I was a grown man driving like a nut with a dying woman chasing a man to ask him about his reproductive look-alikes.

Due to my not really trying, he got away.

For the remaining 20 minutes it took us to reach the hospital, my mother could not stop laughing. I hypothesized on the source of the man’s conceit and his need to advertise. Laughing seemed to lessen her pain, but when she indulged too much I’d see her recoil. It was as if we were the funniest two people on earth. The thought of him lending his car to his mother brought us to tears. Tears of laughter and pain look much alike.

My mother didn’t last long in that hospital. Though I had much respect for the nurses and frontline caregivers, the indifference of her cancer doctor was shocking. During those three weeks I had fantasies of punching him.

I was always able to make my mother laugh. From childhood impressions of Gomer Pyle to mimicking our parish priest with his speech impediment, I could bring my mother to tears with both laughter and my bad grades. Humor kept my family (mostly) sane. Like many dysfunctional households, much of our mirth was born from misery, but the ends justify the means. 

In the three weeks it took her to make the transition from matriarch to angel, my mother still liked to laugh despite her pain and situation. I’d look into her morphine eyes, set in a scared, gaunt face, and mention that bumper sticker. Usually, she would at least smile, sometimes chuckle, and mutter, “That damn fool.”

I’ve since had the luxury of decades of refection of that drive to the hospital. My mother’s vision, with glasses, was twenty-twenty. Her vision was better than mine. I’ve come to believe that she only pretended to misread that message. I think, even though she was scared for her own life, she was trying to lessen my fear with laughter.

Jeffrey Bergeron’s column “Biff America” publishes Mondays in the Summit Daily News. Bergeron has worked in TV and radio for more than 30 years, and his column can be read in several newspapers and magazines. He is the author of “Mind, Body, Soul.” Bergeron arrived in Breckenridge when there was plenty of parking and no stoplights. Contact him at biffbreck@yahoo.com.