…….but I would have missed the dance.”

These words, part of the lyrics of a beautiful song, are very poignant to me.  Many times in my life I have paused to wonder what I might have done differently had I known what was coming….if I had a glimpse of the future.

I learned a long time ago that my ignorance of the big picture in life is actually a gift; to me it’s a gift from God….His divine protection for His naïve and simple daughter.  The Bible refers to humanity as sheep and individuals as lambs, equating us with those gentle and ‘innocent’ animals.  It’s in that innocence that we are spared the knowledge of life, of the future, and, yes the joys awaiting us but also thereby of horrors such as the Holocaust, September 11^th, war, famine, and tsunamis to name a few.

It is also that innocence that spares us from the knowledge of our own demise or that of our loved ones.  For a fleeting moment twenty-nine and a half years ago, I asked myself that question…. ‘had I known what was to come, that the love of my life would die so young, that my partner in everything would be taken from me, that I would be alone to raise my young children…..would I have made different choices?’  I assure you that moment was truly fleeting because I knew I would not have changed one second but would in fact have simply begged for more.  Avoiding the pain would have meant I would have to also avoid the dance.

I came to realize that I had a window of insight….a window between my sheepish innocence believing all was well and the life of my dreams would go on forever and the moment of inevitability that came with a medical diagnosis….that I had the knowledge of the future.  We all know that we are going to die at some point and we all know our loved ones will also pass on. And we are all aware, regardless of whether or not we keep it as a top-of-mind consciousness item, that that moment could come at….well, any moment.  But we are relieved of the knowledge of when those events might happen for which our response is to carry on as if it will never happen. When given the opportunity to ‘know’ the end is near, when we are given the window of insight, when it is as if God has taken us by the shoulders and turned us around saying, ‘There it is my child’, how do we respond?

When death is sudden and unexpected, those left behind tend to speak of regrets….things left undone or, more often and perhaps more tragically in my opinion, things left unsaid.  When death is the final battle after a long war against illness we still seem to want to negotiate the ‘when’.  But what do we do when the battle is lost and we are left standing in that window of knowledge?  The final battle is lost but the ‘war’, the living day-to-day, carries on.  That is the time to dance.

The line between ‘innocence’ and ‘denial’ is very tenuous at the best of time but during times of grieving it becomes a chasm.  In the adult world, when blessed with being placed squarely in the window of knowledge and reality, there is no innocence….only knowledge or denial.  Denial is our response to shock – a way to insulate our hearts while our minds race to make some sense of new knowledge.  The key word though is ‘new’.  My husband was an active 36yr old man who participated fully in family life and sports until the day he took ill and was diagnosed three weeks later with terminal cancer.  That sudden news was definitely shocking and some denial was warranted.  But the window was opened at that moment when the surgeon made it very clear we had only a few months left together.  Three months later, the day doctors told us the battle was over and we now had just a few weeks left, there was no room for denial.  To deny that reality would have been robbing all of us the opportunities to be real and honest and genuine and dance with each other for the time we had left….

Once again, family is in the window of knowledge.  A loved one’s battle with illness is over and the end of the war is coming closer.  It is the time to ensure no regrets….nothing left unsaid or undone.  These are hard but wondrous times.  Whether one day, one month, six months, they are days filled with opportunities…..for visits and phone calls and celebrations and, most importantly, to share love and words, right any wrongs, no holds barred.  God has given a ‘do over’ of sorts….maybe we can’t go back but we can dance each day like there is no tomorrow.

Looking back on the memory of
The dance we shared beneath the stars above,
For a moment all the world was right.
How could I have known you’d ever say goodbye.
And now I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end, the way it all would go.
Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss the dance.

Enjoy the dance…..m