Garth Brooks Made Me Cry in a Hy-Vee Parking Lot

Damn It, Garth Brooks.

I was driving home for lunch today and to let Dogbert out when a Garth Brooks song came on the radio.  I ended up having to pull over in to cry.

I hadn’t heard it in a long time.  “The Dance,” from his debut album.  Bride and I loved that song when it came out in 1989, and the thing was everywhere for a while.  Somewhere along the way, it became more than just a song we liked.  It was kind of a secret motto. 

She used to tell me that her Dad had said something similar to her when she was growing up.  Don’t miss the dance.  I hadn’t thought about that song in a long time.  Then Garth came through the speakers today, and suddenly I wasn’t just driving home to let the dog out.  I was thinking about Bride.  About us.  About all those years when I had absolutely no idea where our story was eventually going.  We stayed focused on the dance.  

And thank God I didn’t know. 

There is no way I would have wanted to know.  I wouldn’t have wanted a clock hanging over almost 40 years, counting down while we were busy living them.  I wouldn’t have wanted to look across the table at her over dinner and wonder how many more dinners we had left.  Or climb into bed beside her and wonder how many more nights. We just got to be gloriously ignorant of all of that.  We just got to be us, dancing our asses off.

I am glad I didn’t know how it would end.  Because I think knowing would have changed the dance we shared.  Maybe I would have held on too tightly.  Maybe I would have spent perfectly good days worrying about how many we had left.  Maybe every ordinary “love ya damn it” would have carried a little fear in it.  Maybe I would have tried to protect myself from something that was coming whether I knew about it or not.

And in trying to protect myself from the ending, I might have missed some of the good stuff.  That seems to be one of grief’s particularly cruel tricks.  Once you know how the story ends, your mind wants to go back and reread the whole damn thing with that knowledge.  I don’t wanna do that. 

The ending DOES NOT get to rewrite everything that came before it. 

There were trips.  Bad jokes.  Arguments.  Ordinary Tuesday nights.  Adventures.  Sitting beside each other doing absolutely nothing.  Plans that worked and plans that went completely to shit.  There was laughter.  There was this life we built without knowing how much time we were going get to live inside it.

And there was the dance.  I know now what I didn’t know then.  There would eventually be a last trip.  A last ordinary night.  A last laugh.  A last time I would hear her voice.  A last time I would hold her.  I am grateful that I didn’t know which ones they were.  Because fear of what might happen someday can take up an awful lot of today if ya let it.

Maybe that is what hit me so hard sitting in the Hy-vee parking lot.  Lately I have thinking a lot about what it means to keep living my life.  Not forgetting Bride.  Not moving on from her as though almost 40 years together were something to get past.  Just living the life I still have because I know, in a way never wanted to learn, that someday there won’t be another chance. 

And maybe there is something in that old advice from her Dad that I need again now.  Don’t miss the fucking dance.  Not because the dance won’t hurt someday.  Because it will.  Not because everyone we love is going to stay.  Because they won’t.  Not because we can somehow arrange our lives so nothing terrible ever happens again.  We can’t. 

We do it because today we are here and the music is playing.  Someone you love may be standing beside you.  There is something you want to learn, somewhere you want to go, someone you want to call, something ridiculous you want to try.  So dance the damn dance because you don’t know how the story ends. 

Sometimes that is terrifying.  And sometimes it is a gift. 

I had the dance.  A hell of a dance actually.  Almost 40 years of it.  And given the choice between having all of that and carrying this pain now, or protecting myself from this pain by never having had her at all, there isn’t really a choice. 

I’d take the dance.  Every. Single. Time

So, there I sat in the damn Hy-Vee parking lot crying over a song that came out in 1989.  Eventually I wiped my eyes and drove on home.  Larry still needed to be let out.  The dance, apparently, includes that too.

Here is the song - The Dance