6. The Dance (November 2019)

Nineteen years ago today, Dennis Kusy died in a head-on collision. He was 24 years old.

Today he would be 43.

In his twenties, Dennis was a passionate, powerfully talented teacher and conductor with laser-focus. He simply wouldn’t accept less than being the best. It was exciting and energizing and sometimes infuriating to be with Dennis, to share in his clarity and certainty, to feel protected and loved in his fierce loyalty to his friends. I figured when he stopped being such a 20-something “guy” (eye roll), he’d realize we were more than friends. I was prepared to wait, thinking we had all the time in the world.

Dennis was having a difficult time in 2001, though, battling severe depression and possibly alcoholism. He was teaching in Lake Wales, Florida and I was a doctoral student in Austin, Texas that year. I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten for him. I knew he’d started taking a drug called Prozac and knew its reputation for poor interaction with alcohol. I thought he knew, too. I was too far away to protect him.

I perfectly remember the Saturday, rainy and sleepy, when a mutual friend called early in the morning to tell me what happened. I remember not understanding the words because it was impossible that anything had happened to Dennis, but being stunned and profoundly frightened to hear our friend’s voice breaking in grief. I hung up the phone blank and numb … and never really came out of that state. I finished the semester, passed my jury, and got on a plane for home, but I have little memory of it. The first clear thing I remember was six weeks after the accident, the morning after Christmas, when the dam finally broke and I basically had a nervous breakdown.

It was a long road coming back. There were a lot of doctors and misdiagnoses for what was obviously overwhelming grief and depression. The next thing I do remember is calling David Maslanka, whose patience and care for me during that time very well might have saved me.

After that, almost a year later, I remember driving from Tallahassee to Atlanta with Pat Dunnigan to premiere my first symphony: “for those taken too soon.”

Dennis always said he never expected to live to see 40. He never said why; I assumed he anticipated a heart attack from all the self-induced stress.

I never expected to survive losing Dennis. I wasn’t sure I wanted to survive.

But two years after the accident, watching our mutual friend weep as he conducted the premiere of Dennis’s memorial, I realized although I had no memory of writing that music, either, something had nevertheless transformed inside me and emerged through me. Something that could save me, and maybe comfort others. There’s power in that. There’s redemption. Most of all, there’s a responsibility and a future. I’m certain Dennis would have not only approved but also insisted I follow it. Some people can find their power naturally; I, of course, needed a nuclear blast to sweep everything else aside, first.

I often wonder what Dennis would be like at 40. I wonder what I would be like if we’d had these 19 years together. I do sometimes still mourn the loss of what he might have been and done, and perhaps what we would’ve done together.

The last time I saw Dennis in person was more than a year before the accident. It was the last day of his band camp, which I was helping him run. The students were learning (no kidding) a Garth Brooks tune called "The Dance":

And I'm glad I didn't know the way it all would end, the way it all would go.

Our lives are better to left to chance.

I could've missed the pain but I'd have had to miss the dance.