Several years ago, my brother-in-law Joe was severely stricken with diabetes. He was required to have dialysis treatments three days a week for four hours a day, and in between these days, he was so tired he could barely pick himself up from a chair.

I invited Joe and my sister, Nancy, to come to a family reunion from New Jersey to Bear Creek Lakes in Jim Thorpe, where I had a second home. After a long procrastination about the ordeal of a two-hour trip, Nancy agreed to come. My family gathered in the picnic grove at the North Beach. We watched my sister take Joe’s arm and help him walk down to the water.

“Now, go slow, Joe,” my sister said. “If you get too tired, we can stop and I’ll get you a chair so you can rest and look at the lake.”

About five yards from the edge of the water, Joe told Nancy he needed to rest. She called me over to hold him up by his arm and she went to get a chair.

“Is she watching me?” Joe asked as I held his arm. I looked back and told him no. Suddenly, he yanked off his shirt and kicked off his shoes. He dropped his pants, leaving on only his boxer shorts. He took two steps back and ran as fast as he could toward the water. He sloshed through the shallow edge and then took a full dive into the lake. I saw him rise out of the water and swim about 20 yards.

“No!” screamed by sister, who had come up beside me. “Somebody help him before he drowns!”

We stood and watched Joe swim back to where he could touch bottom. With a great big smile, he looked at all of us standing on the shoreline. We applauded and hooted and hollered, “Joe!” “Joe!” “Joe!”

Obviously, he was exhausted, so I helped him into a chair, all the while my sister was scolding him for what I believed was an incredible act of courage. Once in the chair, he pulled my ear down to his mouth. “That was fun!” he said with some effort.

Two months later, Joe died.

I thought about that day for quite some time. Here was a man broken in body, but not in spirit, who gathered his strength to have one last opportunity to have a moment of fun his life. His word, “fun” has resonated with me, too. Joe didn’t say, “that was great” or “that was good.” He said, “That was fun.”

The truth is we adults correlate this word with children’s play. Kids have fun. Grown-ups have good times. Is there a difference? The Oxford English Dictionary defines “fun” as “boisterous joviality or merrymaking.” The extended definition says that having fun often results in continuous smiling with frequent spurts of laughter.

There is an apparent difference in the words, “fun” and “funny,” too. When we find something to be funny, we express an outward laugh toward something. When we are having fun, we feel an inward elation that is very personal and cannot be passed along intentionally to someone else. When we say, “Have fun,” we mean well, but it cannot happen on demand.

I once heard a woman say she wanted to date a man who’s fun to be with and makes her laugh. I imagined a line of stand-up comics telling her jokes while trying to win her hand.

Inspirational speaker Randy Pausch, who died from pancreatic cancer, said, “Never, ever underestimate the importance of having fun.”

Derek Jeter, Hall of Fame baseball player, said about the business of professional sports, “You gotta have fun. Regardless of how you look at it, we’re playing a game. It’s a business, it’s our job, but I don’t think you can do well unless you’re having fun.”

We schedule when we can experience something that we think will be fun. We go to the beach. We drag a carload of kids, toys, chairs, blankets, and umbrellas just to lie on a postage-stamp size lump of sand under the broiling hot sun and this thought comes to mind.

“Are we having fun, yet?”

We take a vacation to Disney that costs thousands of dollars. We spend hours and hours running through the park, dodging the crowds of people doing the exact same thing as us. At the end of the day, we flop our exhausted bodies on the hotel beds and we say, “Are we having fun yet?”

You might say I’m a Debbie Downer, but vacations are often stressful tasks that require we have fun locked into in a week or two’s time, and who isn’t glad to open the front doors to their houses when they return home?

Nobody I know writes the words “have fun” on their calendars in between a doctor’s appointment date and the delivery of a new refrigerator.

To be honest, fun usually happens when it’s unscheduled, unscripted and unexpected. It’s a little girl lying on the grass getting licked on the face by her golden retriever and high school kids playing a pickup basketball game at the park with teams made from anybody who shows up. It’s your neighbors surprising you with an impromptu invitation to their backyard barbecue.

My brother-in-law showed me that having fun is not only an urgency, but also a priority. Go ahead and be spontaneous. Dive in the lake. Jump on that bike that’s been leaning against the garage wall for who knows how long. Stand up and sing along at a concert.

Like they say, tomorrow never comes. Make some merry today!

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.