“
Gr ief
can
sometimes
trap
wishing for one more conversation
Honor ing
the
dead
asks
some-
What
did
thi s
person
show
what’s proper might knock the whole thing off its hinges. We don’t do potlucks, whether for funerals or not, and bright col- ors tend to suggest that you are unserious—or, at the very least, not to be taken seriously. This celebration of life was for a colleague of mine, someone I had known years earlier and then quietly lost contact with. We worked at a theater togeth- er—me on the business side, him in the artistic department. I nev- er knew exactly what it was that he did. By the time we crossed paths, he was already very old, and I thought of myself as very busy. I had grants to apply for and funds to raise, seasons to se- cure. I was told he was important, but I couldn’t quite understand how. What, I wondered, could be more important than keep- ing the theater financially alive?
and later an annual dance fes- tival. He received award after award, each bearing a title heavy with meaning and recognition. But what struck me most wasn’t the scale of what he had built—it was the way people described be- ing around him while he built it. Grief can sometimes trap us in longing for the past, wishing for one more conversation or one more ordinary moment. Hon- oring the dead asks something gently different of us. What did this person show me about how to live? By applying these les - sons to our own lives, we ensure that their influence continues beyond their physical presence. When we choose patience be- cause they were patient, gen- erosity because they were generous, or bravery because
And yet, when I met him, I liked him immediately. His mus- tache curled into neat circles at the ends. He gave everyone nicknames, offering them free - ly, as if familiarity were a kind- ness rather than something to be earned. I thought of him as unserious—wonderfully so, but still unserious. A charac- ter in the background of what I believed was the real work. As the celebration began, that understanding slowly unraveled. Speaker after speaker stood up and spoke not about who he had been at the end of his life, but at the beginning, and in the long stretch between. He had started as a folk dancer before joining a major ballet compa- ny. He went on to choreograph dozens of original works, found- ed his own dance company,
Candlelight Magazine
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