Pat and I spent seven hours in the car on Thursday when she took me to the hospital.  We got busy talking about the last week of Ken's life, and I was reminded of a story that I hadn't ever told her.

A couple of months after we were married, we went to the Marine Corps ball.  There was an officer there that Ken particularly disliked. (Ken liked everyone so that tells you what a jerk this man was.) Well, I love to dance and asked Ken to dance with me.  We had never danced with each other before.

I like the feel of beat with rhythm.  I love those exercise videos set to music.  However, being the good little Baptist preacher's son--which he wasn't--he had never really got into dance as being fun when he was growing up.  "I don't dance very well," he said.  "That's okay, I do," I told him.  It was our first and last dance ever--because this man that Ken detested cut in.

"I'll never be put in that position again," Ken told me.  "I'm not dancing any more and taking a chance that I will have to give you up to some jerk." And he never did dance with me again.

Fast forward fifty-seven years.  Ken had deteriorated to the point that he had to be lifted to make it to a walker.  He was too heavy for me, but Pat found a way to get him from his chair to the walker.  She would put her hands under his arms and say, "Let's dance, Daddy.  Just let me put my arms around you and lift you up and we will dance in a circle and back you up to your walker.  All you have to do is shuffle."  And he did.  He danced.  And he smiled.

I wish it had been with me.  But better for him to dance with Pat than not at all.

Ecclesiastes 3:1,4 "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven...A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance..."  The time was finally right for Ken to dance.  And he did.