Dance Then

Dance, then, wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the dance, said he, and I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be, and I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

For as long as Mark and I were together, dancing was a part of our lives. Neither of us were very good at it but it didn’t stop us. We’d slow dance as best we could, and lamely move our clumsy feet to the faster stuff, never really caring how dorky we looked. Years ago when we were at one of Mark’s department Christmas parties and were on the dance floor, his boss danced over to us with his wife and said, “You need to do the prom shuffle.” We looked at him oddly not knowing what that was and he said, “Didn’t you learn that at your high school prom? That’s when you grab each other’s ass and go around in a circle.” Mark thought that was so hilarious that he would use that line over and over.

When the kids were growing up we danced with them too. One night when we were coming home from Costco, we could hear the thump of music from down the street. When we got home, Maggie and a friend had pushed all of the furniture against the wall so they could dance. At a wedding I asked Will where he learned his impressive dance moves because it was apparent they didn’t come from his parents. “In the dorms at college,” he said, and I didn’t know that the housing fee came with an added bonus. Mallory started taking dance when she was in 2nd grade and she would blow us all out of the water with her dancing. We all went to her recitals because watching our own Tiny Dancer representing the Fishers made us proud.

I was pregnant with Maggie while Mark was finishing up grad school when we went to the wedding of his advisor. Out on the dance floor, I vividly remember the conversation. “Mark,” I said, “we’re going to have such a beautiful life. You’re going to be a hotshot professor and babies are coming into our life and I’m so happy right now.” He was too. It was the start of his career, and though filled with uncertainty about where and how it would lead our young family, we were excited for it to begin.

It would lead us out of Illinois and into Maryland where Mark got a post-doctoral position at the National Institutes of Health. Five years later, Mark’s career would bring us to Kansas where he was one of hundreds of applicants for an assistant professor position. During the interview process which lasted two days, his future boss brought him to his house for dinner. His wife owned a catering business and Mark devoured everything she made. “He loves food,” she told her husband. “That’s all you need to know. Hire him.” There were other factors that were considered besides that but he landed the job, we jumped for joy, and danced in the kitchen. Then we moved a U-Haul, two kids, and a turtle across the country. Our time in Kansas was supposed to be a stopping off point to other things. Mark felt that a job on either coast would be far better for his research and he was probably right, but it was where we stayed and made our life.

Four days after Mark’s funeral, was the wedding of my nephew, Doug, and his fiancee in Colorado. In the midst of the tragic end to Mark’s life was this commitment we had made to attend the wedding. Though Mark initially planned on going with us, he had an early class to teach the following day. He would have to leave the wedding early that Sunday night and get to the airport in order to be home in time to teach, so his plan had been to stay back in Kansas while the rest of us went.

There were many discussions about whether the kids and I should go or not. I think everyone assumed we wouldn’t. I thought otherwise. We piled into two cars and drove to Colorado, shaky and shocked to start our very different lives – lives we could not fathom less than two weeks before. It was hard, incredibly hard. There was a river near where we were staying that Mark would have loved, and we were surrounded by nature. It was beautiful and peaceful and stinging with loss all at the same time. If the wedding had been even a month after Mark’s death I’m not sure I could have gone. By then the passing days of regular life had become awful, as night after night he didn’t come home even though I kept waiting for him.

Thirteen months later I am still stunned by Mark’s death. It is an odd thing to be living in a real and surreal environment simultaneously. His bike never has coasted around the corner again, but the black dress pants that he last wore are folded in his closet with the belt still threaded through the loops and his gardening shoes are on the back porch.

At the wedding reception, the kids and I sat together and watched the best man and maid of honor give their speeches, we watched my brother and the bride’s mother give speeches. We watched my nephew dance with his mom, and his beautiful Helen dance with her father. Sometimes we had to look away because it was too painful to witness, but in the end we did what we have always known to do when presented with the chance to celebrate life and love.

We danced.