AFTER THE DANCE
IS OVER
A Widow Bit—Jan. 27, 2008
By Mary Koch

                I was invited to lunch this week by a recent widow. Perhaps she thought that since I’d been widowed three months longer, I might have some answers for her, such as how to feel less lonely, how to hurt not so much. Truth was, she had the edge on wisdom and experience. She’d been married more years than I’ve been alive.

            She has children and grandchildren nearby but, quoting the widow’s mantra, “They have their own lives to live. I don’t want to make demands on their time.” I’ll bet they want to spend more time with her than she believes, and they’ll get it sorted out.

            She devotes many hours to looking through photo albums, which she had organized meticulously through the years. But they make her even sadder, and she realizes she’s going to have to put them away for a while.

            It’s likely she has a long life ahead of her. One of her grandmothers lived to be 105 – after raising 14 children! At this point, the thought of living that long does not appeal, she says. At this point.

            She met her husband-to-be at a college dance. Pert, slender and attractive even now in her 80s, she was undoubtedly in high demand in her youth. When the tall, good-looking young man asked her to dance, she answered, “You can have the third dance.”

            “Forget it,” he retorted and walked away. He wanted them all, and he finally got every dance with her for the rest of his life.

            They danced their way through a three-year courtship. They danced to the music of the big bands, Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller, Lawrence Welk. This was in the Midwest where, she says, people know how to dance.

            She sighs and shakes her head. “They just don’t have places for young people to dance here.”

            The newlyweds started with nothing, not even a car. But he was a hard worker, conscientious and a smart business man. They did well financially, raised children, endured together some of the heartbreaks life dishes out, traveled all over the world.

            The dance began to slow as his health failed, and she became his caregiver. “There were times I could have been nicer,” she reflects with regret.

            “Me too,” I answer. “We all could be nicer, but we did the best we could.”

            It always seems like there should be time for one more dance, but before she knew it she was sitting beside his hospital bed, a priest on the other side. Her beloved dance partner was semi-paralyzed by stroke; he could barely speak.

            At the priest’s invitation, he mumbled his way through “Hail, Mary, full of grace . . . “ and “Our Father . . . “

            Then she suggested, “Tell Father how many years we’ve been married.”

            The words were a struggle, but he managed: “Sixty-four. It’s been a good marriage.” Those were the last words she heard him speak.

            What an eloquent way to say, “Thanks for the dance.”

© Mary Koch, Omak, Washington 2008

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