Dance

You know something bad is happening but you’re not close enough anymore to ask. So you wait off to the side until the whole world knows, not what is happening, but what has happened. And then the only thing you can do is offer condolences.

You remember when he came as a young graduate student to your business office looking for an internship. And you remember having to tell him you were closing your business and going to work for the government but you’d try to slip him in the back door at the courthouse. You remember how young he was, how happy and guileless, how hard he worked, and how he whistled as he bounced down the hallway. You remember how you relied on him and how when you changed jobs, you figured out a way to leave a door open at the new place. Because he was that special. And he was that dear to you.

You remember his wedding and how you saved putting your little boys’ purple and red dress shirts on them until you got to the parking lot so they wouldn’t look a mess walking into the Lutheran Church in a small Wisconsin town and how, at the reception, you envied the newly married couple as they danced a tango that they had obviously been practicing for months. Their joy, the memory of that joy, would make you weep decades later.

You can tell a grieving person that you are sorry for his loss or that his loved one is in a better place or that if he needs anything he should call or you can tell him that you remember when he and his new wife danced the tango so very many years ago, how they were golden in the evening light, and how their dance seemed timeless, transcendent, as if it would last a lifetime. You could say that. It wouldn’t change anything but it would be true.