Elana Schipper found comedy while her husband was dying.

“When my husband was ill, we watched a lot of stand-up comics at night before going to sleep,” she remembers. “I had no jokes to bring to the hospital while he was there, but we tried to keep a sense of humor.”

Then, around the time he died, over 13 years ago, Schipper read a book that changed her outlook and her life. Although she remembers neither title nor author, the content couldn’t be clearer.

“It was about choices: You can be happy or unhappy.” She decided that not only did she not want to be miserable, she wanted to help other people shake off the blues. “I just decided to be happy,” she said.

Now she volunteers as a comedian, telling jokes to appreciative audiences at the Lester Senior Housing Community in Whippany. She calls herself a “sit-down comedian,” because a battle with multiple sclerosis makes standing for long periods difficult.

On a recent Friday afternoon, she took her seat across from 20 people at Lester’s assisted-living facility (she lives next door in the independent housing complex), reading jokes she gleaned from the Internet, from friends, from anything she thinks is funny. She acknowledged that some of the jokes are “groaners,” but she counts this one among her favorites: A man goes to a bank to take out a loan of $1,000 for a monthlong trip to Israel. He puts his car, a Lotus, up as collateral. The bank, located in New York City, impounds the car and parks it in the bank parking lot. When the man returns, the bank, having ascertained in the meantime that he is a person of considerable means, asks the man why he took out a loan when he clearly did not need the money. “You are right,” he replied. “But where else in New York City could I have parked my car while I was away for so little money?”

Schipper’s first effort to spread the gospel of laughter was as a “mitzva clown” visiting senior centers and hospitals, but she found it took too long to apply and remove the makeup. For a time she played the clown without the makeup but with a costume a friend sewed for her. “I went to a walkathon at the Madison-area YMCA. I wore the dress and put jokes in the pocket. I couldn’t do the walking, so I figured that was my share.”

And she used her humor to help her grandson cope with a fatal illness, right to the end. Daniel was diagnosed with leukemia at 15 and died at 18.

“His mother couldn’t handle it,” she acknowledged. “I had jokes for him, for other patients, for nurses, even for parents. One day he let me put my [clown] dress on and come in, and I made everyone laugh. After Daniel died, I started doing it more.”

That was three and a half year ago. She soon started volunteering at the Daughters of Israel senior citizens facility in West Orange, where she still volunteers and often leaves her jokes behind for people to enjoy.

Schipper grew up in Newark and attended Weequahic High School. She moved to Maplewood as an adult and eventually to Madison.

And if some of her acquaintances stopped socializing with her after the death of her husband, she found other friends and a new companion, whom she has been with for 10 years now. She has traveled the world with her children and grandchildren and regrets only that the MS keeps her from skiing. When she moved into Lester, she realized she didn’t have to travel all the way to West Orange to do her routine; she could just walk next door.

Never one to be cowed by fate or by her peers, she characteristically had the last laugh when others scoffed at her for carefully investing the money budgeted for her mortgage once it was paid off. “Ha, ha,” she said. “Now I can afford to live at Lester.”