Dancing makes me cry. I do it anyway.

Things were opening up around the San Francisco Bay Area, at last.

And so, after a year of Zoom Zumba and Zoom yoga, it was time to pay an in-person visit to my gym up in the hills. Take an outdoor fitness class. Say hello to the Zumba ladies and the yoga folks.

I did it. I went. I did the Zumba. I danced. I found a place to dance at the back of the class, in case I started crying, which I did.

I cried because after a year and a half of pandemic lockdown, my life was starting up again and it was starting without Jon.

I cried because these days dancing makes me cry.

Blessing Is Smiling at Jon

It doesn’t take much to set me off. Jon’s cell phone rings and rumbles on the dining room table — tears. I spot his shoes in the closet where he left them — sobs. A picture arrives from Africa of Blessing, the child he decided to sponsor a few months before he died. Blessing is smiling at the camera. Blessing is smiling at Jon. My hands go to my face. I cry.

And so, when I joined the Zumba class the other day, there were tears.

Oddly, there is something about dancing that takes me to that weepy, falling-apart place, that puts me face-to-face with this new impossibility in my life: the unbearable fact of Jon’s non-existence. Ubiquitous Jon, who for 50 years was right there in front of me, needling me, encouraging me. Listening to me. Ignoring me. Standing by me.

He was there, right next to me. And then he wasn’t.

But what is it about dancing that throws me to the floor in tears? Hiking doesn’t get me crying. Neither does taking a walk in the neighborhood.

Maybe Anabela, a friend from my much, much younger days, can shed some light.

Anabela Wouldn’t Dance

I had two best friends back in 1964 during my student days in Heidelberg, Anabela and Margareta. Margareta was from Sweden and she was a free spirit, a young woman very much of the 20th, maybe even the 21st century.

Anabela was her foil. Anabela was from Brazil and more 19th century than 20th. Old school, old fashioned. Anabela’s father had died shortly before she came to study at Heidelberg University’s Interpreter’s Institute.

Margareta and I went to the Heidelberg student parties and danced our hearts out, whatever the music, and with or without partners.

Anabela went along with us to the parties. But she would not dance. She was in mourning, she explained. Deep mourning. And she would be in mourning for her father for a full year. During that year she would not dance.

I’m in mourning right now. And at my gym up in the hills, I danced. I am sad beyond words. Sad beyond sad. Desolate. Yet I danced the other day.

Dancing Is Good for You

I danced because I need to take care of myself. And dancing is supposed to be good for you. It’s good for your body, like hiking and walking.

But it’s also a joyful thing, which is maybe why Anabela’s culture forbade it to the grieving.

And there I was the other day, dancing, going to that joyful place.

And crying.

Are joy and sorrow of  a piece somehow?

Is that why dancing makes me cry?

We can’t help it. We hold on to the things we cherish — husbands, trailside poppies. Read more about that at “I Cling, Therefore I Am.”