The Dance

This time of year always reminds me of my Dad. So many things do. I have a million memories that come back so easily with the slightest provocations. Playoff baseball. Football season. The sound of my high school band practicing just up the street.

But my Dad died in the Fall. And as the cool weather arrives, and the leaves change, and people begin to light their fireplaces, I can barely get him out of my mind.

Senses are powerful things. I have heard that the sense of smell is one of the most powerful and most neglected sense we have. (OK there are only 5, so really, the competition isn't that stiff.) It is incredible to me how a smell can bring to life a long dormant memory, perhaps of something that would not spring to mind on its own, just by reaching our noses.

The smell of old books transports me back to my elementary school library, with its warped floors, and chubby little librarian, and shelves upon shelves of books that called to me, and its Dewey Decimal System and archaic card file drawers and typed cards.

The smell of Shalimar takes me back to a time when my parents were married, they still got dressed up for dates with one another, and the sense of impending doom had not yet crept into my psyche.

The smell of tequila makes my stomach churn and I relive the night in college when a few of us made it a mission to get to the worm as fast as we could with near disastrous results. I could hardly be in the same room with a lemon and a salt shaker for a while either.

But the memories of the end of my Dad's life are triggered by a smell nearly completely unrelated to my Dad himself.

It was a Fall day and I was working at a law firm. I'd just decided the firm would better off without the services and sabotaging activities of our Benefits Manager and had severed her from employment just as her peak season of rate negotiation and enrollment were ramping up. I had just wrapped up a meeting with one of our brokers when I'd been met in the corridor by an assistant, Barbie. She had taken a call from Charlotte, had been explained its urgency, and had come to find me. While I returned Charlotte's call, Barbie completed a cab voucher and called me a cab to take me to my car at the train station in the suburbs so I could drive to Dad's bedside at the hospital. She cleared my calendar and vowed to run interference on email. Barbie was a good egg. She was ten steps ahead of me on a good day.

I called Charlotte again from the cab. "This is the beginning of the end, isn't it?" I'd said. She agreed with the assessment. She was on her way to meet me at the hospital. She'd be about 10 minutes behind me. Not wanting to walk in and deal with things alone for even a minute, I offered to stop at Starbucks and get us some preposterously large coffees. I'd spring for the seasonal latte. A pumpkin spice flavor with whip and nutmeg.

Charlotte agreed to the treat.

And now, every late September when Starbucks brings out the pumpkin spices I am in my time machine. Going nearly 6 years back in time to relive the sadness and mercifulness of the last few weeks of my beloved father's life.

This year, when the aroma takes me back, I decide to download the song that had wordlessly made me cry last year on the anniversary of Dad's passing, in the home store in Arizona with my girlfriends. It's Garth Brooks' "The Dance."

"And now, I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would it 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."

Thank you for the dance, Dad.