After losing my son to terror, I started dancing at 70 to learn how to live again

A dance recital was definitely not on my bucket list. In fact, I don’t have a bucket list.

So why would I dance?

One reason is because of my doctor. He told me that I had to do things that would make me happy.

But life seeps in. We needed to parent our other children. I wrote a book, The Blessing of a Broken Heart, which served as my personal process of bibliotherapy. We founded the Koby Mandell Foundation and through the years have worked with thousands of bereaved families.

And when, after many years, I landed in the hospital for an operation on my colon, my doctor said, “No more grief. You need to do things that are fun.”

I didn’t want to perform. For me, the goal of dancing was happiness, to enjoy movement. We danced to classics like “Fly Me to the Moon,” “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” and “Steam Heat”– music that made me happy. Dancing made me happy. That was enough for me.

Year one through three with the class, I didn’t perform. But this year, when the other students and my teacher, Michelle Gordon, asked me, I relented. Mainly because I was 70. And with age it’s good to try new things.

That’s the advice, isn’t it?

Don’t get stuck. Keep going. Keep moving.

Still, I was uncertain about performing. Why would I want to perform at an old age home?

I’d seen my mother-in-law’s nursing home in Massachusetts. Although it looked like a ski lodge, when my mother-in-law was forced to move from independent living to a real nursing home where she was with the real old and the sick – people drooling in their wheelchairs, staring vacantly, slumped over – I was shocked by the fate of old people like my mother-in-law. To live a whole vibrant life and then reduce it to a square of sickness was painful.

But this was my moment to dance. If not now, when? I decided to chance it and give it go. But I didn’t know why old people would want to watch amateurs dance.

As we drove to the nursing home, I asked my fellow dancer Linda, who is in her fifties, “I don’t understand. Why do you like to perform?”

She said, “I like giving people pleasure.”

I laughed. It seemed a little, shall we say, titillating. I wasn’t convinced. I still didn’t know why I had agreed to dance at an old age home.

We arrived. The nursing home looked a bit like a hotel, a huge lobby with a big beautiful fish tank. People in the lobby smiled at us.

When we finally got on stage, I decided to enjoy it all, to give the audience pleasure. As I danced, I smiled and looked out at the small crowd, some in wheelchairs, some with walkers parked next to them, some with aides at their side. I didn’t worry about screwing up. What difference would it make? This wasn’t Lincoln Center. Besides, the audience probably had poor vision – at least some of them – and wouldn’t be able to tell.

The audience smiled at us. They clapped. They laughed. And I did see pleasure.

And then, at the end of our dance, the music kept playing. The audience was invited to join us dancing on the improvised stage. Some got up or tottered up or rolled up and joined us.

Some were dancing with one hand on their walkers, some were swaying in their wheelchairs, and some were singing along.