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I took every woman I dated in high school to see The Last Waltz, Martin Scorcese’s great concert movie about the last performance of The Band. It was my standard first date. I believe I saw the film ten times. When something works, I say, just keep doing it.

After my parents’ split I spent summers in my father’s cabinet shop. Dad’s life had been so blasted by divorce and quitting drinking that sometimes it hurt just to look at him. One day he told me that he’d gone to see The Last Waltz, my favorite movie for the entirety of high school.

“Alone?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you told me it was good.”

I turned away and went back to work. He was telling me about fifteen hundred things, and I was hearing them all. He was saying how lonely he was. He was saying how much everything hurt. He was saying that he wanted to be my friend, but he didn’t feel like he could insist on it, after all he’d done to make my life difficult.

I should have wrapped him in my arms. I should have grabbed him right then and taken him to a movie. The fact that I didn’t is a precious gift to me now: I hope I remember every day that failure and what it could have meant to both of us.

Tags: memoiry

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