Silence the Pianos

I led my dance party's review of the Shim Sham a week ago last Sunday, and the next day something terrible happened. 

One of our swing-dance teachers died. 

We knew she was sick, and we knew she was in hospital. Our priest had said that day's Mass for her, and I told our little group that, too. The night before the party I had prayed the Rosary for her on my knees. 

I knew that she had cancer, and so did Benedict Ambrose. The two patients talked about it together at last month's party. She told B.A. that she was more worried for her husband than for herself, and B.A. told her that he was more worried for me than for himself. But none of us knew she was so close to death.

It was a week before I found out what had happened, for I didn't get around to writing to them to tell them about our Shim Sham review until the next Sunday. The surviving teacher, her husband, wrote that he was glad that we were keeping up with the Shim Sham, and it was a lovely legacy. 

It's so terrible that a lovely married couple who spread so much happiness through sharing their love of joyful dancing are now divided by death. It's unbelievably sad. I'm crushed, and I only got to know our teachers from November.

Of course, I also remembered them from classes I took a decade ago. When I contemplated adding swing dance to the Waltzing Party, they were the only swing teachers in town I was willing to risk introducing to our youngsters. To this day I don't know anything about their religious beliefs, philosophy or politics, but I did know that they were good teachers and had been married for over 20 years. 

It's so disheartening. First, it's an appalling tragedy for the widower, who has lost at one stroke both his wife and his dance partner. Second--or last, in the grand scheme of things, but second for me--my group have lost our teachers. And we weren't taught just dancing: we were shown what a very happy, companionate marriage can look like, even among (whisper it) non-Catholics. We watched a great lead interact with a great follow, and we saw how the two roles complemented each other. And at no point did our kind teachers ever betray that they might have thought we all might be the tiniest bit weird. Au contraire--they mentioned that we were snappy dressers, as indeed we are on Sundays. In fact, I would not  have been surprised to discover that their religion was jazz, their philosophy great pedagogy, and their politics vintage-style clothing.  

Am I ever likely to find such great teachers again? Today it seems unlikely. 

But I will carry on doing my bit to promote social dancing to tradition-minded Catholics because I firmly believe that good music and social dancing has a role to play in enriching and and consolidating the Catholic community. As we all know, Catholicism isn't just for Sundays, and it's not just for inside churches. It's for Friday and Saturday nights, too, and it encompasses not only explicitly devotional activities but traditional music and dancing, too. I just hope I can convince more Catholics of that.