Last Dance, Last Chance

and a bath-and-a-half, and even though it looked like millions of other houses where young couples start out, Dan and Sarah were thrilled because it was theirs.
    Dan built a shed in the back, and Sarah discovered that she loved gardening. It wasn’t a very expensive landscaping project, but it looked great, and Sarah took great satisfaction in it.
    “Our home was our hobby,” Dan said. “We fixed it up outside, and Sarah planted flowers. There was a whole section in the backyard where she planted packets of wildflower seeds. We called it our potluck garden because we never knew what was going to come up. Daisies were her favorite flowers.”
    Three years after Nathan’s birth, Amanda was born. “Nathan was like his mother,” Sandy Smith said. “Thoughtful and strong, too. He was his mother’s son, and he thought she was the most special mother in the world. When Sarah had Amanda, she was a miniature version of her mother. But Amanda’s emotions were more on the surface.”
    Dan and Sarah’s time off work was spent with their children, their parents, and good friends. “Friday nights were special to us,” Dan said. “We rented kids’ movies and made popcorn, and we all bundled up in blankets on the living room couch. We usually fell asleep there. Sometimes, in the summer, we went for drives on Friday nights.”
    Nothing interrupted those family nights. They also loved to go over to swim in the elder Smiths’ pool and share a barbecue. They spent Christmas Eves with Sarah’s mom, Barb, and then went to Dan’s parents on Christmas Day. Dan loved his mother-in-law. Although Sarah’s father had married again and lived in Iowa, Sarah remained close to him. Russell Grafton called her every second Sunday, and they visited back and forth.
    Dan was proud when they entertained several of his friends, and the men commented on what a wonderful wife he had. “They told me I was so lucky because she was such a great person, and I knew I was lucky,” he said. “She was young, funny, vibrant, and outgoing. She just put a smile on your face.”
    They argued sometimes. Dan and Sarah didn’t have a perfect marriage, but they came close. “We just believed that you should work things out,” Dan said. “We always figured that marriage was what you put into it.”
    Chillingly, they had a few somber conversations that might have surprised people who knew them. “We’d only been married a year or two,” Dan said, “and we started talking about ‘What if? What if one of us would die; how could the other one go on? I remember that we asked each other what we would want for the one that was left.”
    Sarah told Dan that her biggest fear was that he would be miserable without her. And how would he take care of Nathan and Amanda? “Don’t stop living,” she told him. “If I wasn’t here, remember that I would want you to go on and be happy. I’d want you to find somebody to love.”
    And then she laughed. “And if you found the wrong one, I’d let you know before you married her. I’d drop a drink in your lap or something to get your attention!”
    *  *  *
    Dan’s parents, Sandy and Tim Smith, used to feel blessed, too, by their good health and their four kids, who had turned out well. Then, in the spring of 1997, Tim suddenly became very ill. For three weeks, doctors couldn’t diagnose what was wrong with him. His kidneys weren’t functioning as they should. Finally, they honed in on Wagner’s disease and were able to get him stabilized.
    It made them all realize how vulnerable they were to the vagaries of fate—that there were no guarantees for them, or for anybody. They cherished their family all the more. They all felt as if they had dodged a bullet.
    Dan and Sarah had a big project the summer of 1997: they worked together to remodel their bedroom. “We steamed off the old wallpaper,” Dan said, “and sanded everything down, put up new wallpaper, and painted. Sarah used stencils to paint designs, and we got some bedside tables. We didn’t spend that much. It was mostly our own work we put into it.”
    The elder Smiths had always welcomed foreign exchange students into their home. “We had them from France, Spain, Peru, Ecuador, Germany, and Russia,” Sandy laughed, “all through the years after our own kids were grown.”
    The 1996–1997 students were from France, and they were due to go home in the third week of August. As usual, Sandy and Tim Smith threw a big farewell party for them