Last Dance …or not.

Last updated on: September 1, 2026 at 10:49 pm by Sherry Antonetti

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Last Dance …or not. 2026-09-01T22:49:32-04:00 Sherry Antonetti

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Back in 2017, my pastor and parish honored me with Volunteer of the Year. In truth, it was more of a “You’ve been here so long…” award, but it meant a lot and at the annual auction, I danced like a crazy fool with the people I’d worked for and with on various projects for the past eighteen years, and the song I remember most, was “Last Dance.” We’d had a tradition of playing as the last song for years, and it was all of us out there, singing, grooving, acting like we were having our last dance.

Turns out, it was. That year, a lot of us went our separate ways to different parishes, and we never quite had that whole hold again. The song came on a few more years, and the few of us who remained would dance fondly, but the wholeness of that community that existed, no longer was, so the song now held a whistfulness for what wasn’t.

These days, writing stories holds that same whistfulness, like the story component of my brain is dormant –not dead, but hibernating. It’s becoming harder and harder to pull together words and make a column, not because I have any problem emotionally, intellectually or spiritually, but because sometimes, gifts like communities, like friends, like dances, have seasons.

It’s hard to feel like I am still a writer, when writing is so difficult, but I know it’s the doing that makes one a writer, not the longing, and not the publishing. So I’m back to wrestling with words, recognizing that what I tell my students, “Struggle means growth,” holds true for me too.

So as I did the dishes tonight, I reflected on my journey to become a writer. Was I still one? Yes. Just one who had let life get in the way of writing, which meant to my joy, there were memories stored up to share that would eventually become sources of good material for story. Writing requires discipline even more than inspiration, and so by starting with a whistful moment, I could rediscover the purpose of having this blog. Wandering through my thoughts until I found what generated all of them. Like Spring flowers.

So I’ll play some more Donna Summer to jam out to, remember my friends and remember why I started writing in the first place. I mut be willing to wander and to struggle, and to write and dance like it’s the last dance. It will allow me to celebrate the community I’m in, the moment I’m in.

So definitely not the last dance, on my honor.

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