LAST DANCE, CONFESSIONS AT 2:52AM:
“…and let me take a long last look before we say goodbye…”
~~Don Henley, “The End of the Innocence”~~

Nearly three years ago, in a life decision I’ve sometimes regretted, I made the choice that teeter totters between altruistic & selfish to log my mom’s & my family’s battle with dementia. This is one of those regretful times as the last 5 months, especially the last 2 weeks, have been hard but testiing validates the testimony. Last Friday, we closed the paperwork on the bricks & roofing & flooring my mom & dad purchased & called home since 1977. Yesterday morning in church over a song, I closed out some emotion & tension in a 5 minute fury of tears & sweat & an out of character extended hand toward God in an account that opened on Thursday afternoon. As I wheeled the garbage can down the driveway & parked it on the patio, it hit me that this would be my last time. And I looked onto & then stepped into a yard growing with little blue & violet wildflowers that would need cutting soon & for the first spring & summer since 2001, someone else would man the lawnmower. With that realization, I headed inside, turning the lock as I grieved, about to find that grief is just love with nowhere left to run. Into the den & “they” started to show up, all the crucibles that forge a family, faith & failing & rebelling & rescue & forgiveness & redemption & the rising & the falling & the full house & the forever empty chairs & memories, the monstrous of the group & the compact of the individual, all lined up for a frenzied waltz under the lunatic mirror ball between my ears. By the fireplace sat my dad’s blue recliner, where at one time sat a couch that witnessed the first time my lips met Miss Julie’s. Up the steps into the kitchen where the ancient kitchen table sat & now sits like the living room’s ancient china cabinet, at a new address but with the same last name. Through the echoes of the empty living room that hosted Sunday lunch & Thanksgiving & Christmas, past my sister’s room & the bathroom that my dad used his artistry as a plasterer to make drywall mud look like stucco to the end of the hall where on the right my parents bedroom sat & I’m sure worry lived as finances struggled & I’m still seeing the results of late night prayers offered to God. And on the left, my old room. I walked to the back window & looked out & thought of May 1978 when I cried looking out that window as I packed a bag & faced knee surgery from a spring football injury & absorbed the doctor’s words that my junior year was lost & he’d make no promises for my senior year & I swore I’d prove that blankety blank doctor wrong & I moved to the other window, the one a year later I looked out & cried because all the effort, the lonesome ice packs & whirlpool baths because injuries are treated like communicable diseases as you can’t help the team & the lonesome workouts weren’t enough & I looked down & saw the telephone jack that my dad had installed in mine & my sister’s rooms so that one phone, our version of a mobile phone, could travel between two rooms & thought, because regret has a long shelf life, about the cheerleader in my 11th grade homeroom & walking with her from first period into Old Main scared to talk to her & then that night courageously dialing six numbers but never being able to push the seventh & promising myself I’d talk to her tomorrow & about 10AM tomorrow I’d promise myself I’d push that seventh digit later that night & I thought about my parents & having to tell them in that room that my GPA one semester wouldn’t be too good but my pool game was stellar. And I remembered my dad waking me up that next semester & riding to work with him & promising myself to not repeat my pool playing behavior & the night I stared at the ceiling sure Miss Julie was the one. Then, back through for the last time, past bedrooms & a faux stuccoed bathroom & through an echoing living room & the outline on wood flooring where a china cabinet sat for 47 years & a last look out the kitchen window where I washed dinner dishes after my semester’s dalliance with the billiard table & into the den where I sat when my mom gave Jesus a run for his money in the “making the lame to walk” category the summer of my knee surgery as I twirled the phone cord after answering a cute girl’s phone call & unknowingly,  until the laser beams shot out of my mom’s eyes, found that my styrofoam spit cup of Skoal had spilled on her off white carpet & in a hobbled sprint I hung up & went for paper towels & I thanked God for my mom & my dad & his blue chair where so much wisdom & so much belief in me was dispersed & I thanked Him for the spot where I took a chance & kissed Miss Julie & I hoped my dad was proud of me & my sister for taking care of our mom & I counted out the waltz’s last beats in ¾ time, turned off the mirror ball, took one last look, gave myself permission to grieve later whenever love again runs out of somewhere to go & locked the door, never to dance again…