The Dancers

for Agnes and Jackie

When they were about five years old, she stumbled as they danced to the Christmas music playing on the old Bakelite radio. He picked her up from the wooden school floor. She smiled. 

When he was thirteen, they danced together for the very first time as a couple. He had been learning to dance in secret to impress her at the party. She laughed as they danced.

At the wedding, they danced the way they had back when they were thirteen years old and the music was the same as the old school Bakelite radio.

When their first child was born, he ran outside the hospital doors and danced in the rain and thanked the angels for their kindness.

As their daughter received her degree from the college, the two of them danced a little dance as they walked up to hug her.

At their silver wedding anniversary they danced with their grandchildren and they wondered how they had ever got so lucky.

Every week they danced in the ballroom, and every week they would leave the hall feeling better than they had arrived.

When the doctor told him it was a brain tumour, he never spoke of it, not to her or to the children. Naturally the doctor had told her but she never mentioned it, either.

One day, he stumbled during the dance and she picked him up from the old wooden floor.

He said, “I think we should stop the dancing now."

She turned away from him and let the tear run down her face.

bobby stevenson 2012