This Is Not A Dress Rehearsal

A few weeks ago, I was shopping at Ross and came across a purple bag. Italian leather, silver chain. Chic as all get out. Not surprisingly, the price tag declared a rather alarming $149. Now when you consider that the original price was upwards of $250, this new price was quite a deal. But when you also consider that although I'm picking up some contract work these days, I am still without "the job"--this price made me start thinking all those things we think about when the price tag is daunting. "I don't really need it," being the most common and probably strongest of them all.

An elderly woman saw me looking at my reflection in the mirror, bag slung sexily over my shoulder. "That's a great bag for you. Definitely your color." I brightened. Here was a complete stranger who recognized the affinity I had with the bag.

"But it's so expensive," I replied, feeling somewhere around 16 years of age.

"If you like it, get it. This is not a dress rehearsal."

I nodded and smiled. I held the bag a little closer.

"Do you know what I mean by that?" I nodded again.

"I'm 81," she declared, and it's all downhill."

We both continued wading through the bags. She was toting a colorful striped bag, which she displayed proudly. "It's fun, don't you think?" I told her I did. She nodded and started heading off towards the next aisle.

"Remember what I told you," she said.

"I will," I promised.

"What is it? Say it."

"This is not a dress rehearsal."

She nodded approvingly and disappeared among the shoppers.

I've thought about that statement. It was especially meaningful for me, I think, because of my experience as an actress. Dress rehearsal was important, but never as important as the "actual performance" with an audience in attendance.

Yet how many times in my life had I lived through events, encounters with other people, or even my own soul-searching as if it weren't quite the "real thing," as if that were coming later.

The most difficult of all these was the terrible ordeal of my ex-husband's death. One of the haunts that continues to torment me is that on some level I didn't take his death as actually taking place. Perhaps it was my mechanism to cope with the whole thing, but somehow it seemed he was kidding--that he wasn't really wasting away to a fraction of himself, that he wasn't really disappearing each minute of the day.

The reality finally struck, of course, when I received the news that he had died. But even now, sometimes, it's difficult for me to believe that he isn't going to turn up somewhere--with one of his comic lines, telling me it was just a rehearsal, that for now he's still here. I wish that would be. But I know it's not the case. Another reason for grabbing every minute, every encounter, every opportunity that seems right. You never know about tomorrow. You barely know about today.