The Road You Didn't Take

I believe in God in at least three persons: as well as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there’s Stephen Sondheim.

High on my list of fairygodmother wishes would be to play the part of Benjamin Stone in Follies .  It's not going to happen, alas, although I don't think I'd disgrace it and I'm not yet too old for it.  Ben is the guy who gets to sing

You're either a poet, or you're a lover
Or you're the famous Benjamin Stone.
You take one road, you try one door,
There isn't time for any more.
One's life consists of either/or.
One has regrets

Which one forgets,
And as the years go on….
The road you didn't take
Hardly comes to mind, does it?
The door you didn't try,
Where could it have led?
The choice you didn't make
Never was defined, was it?
Dreams you didn't dare
Are dead.
Were they ever there?
Who said?
I don't remember, I don't remember at all.
....

You yearn for the women, long for the money,
Envy the famous Benjamin Stone.
You take your road, the decades fly,
The yearnings fade, the longings die.
You learn to bid them all goodbye.
And oh, the peace, the blessed peace...
At last you come to know:
The roads you never take
Go through rocky ground,
Don't they?
The choices that you make
Aren't all that grim.
The worlds you never see
Still will be around,
Won't they!
The Ben I'll never be,
Who remembers him?

It’s a song stuffed with more ironies, more denial, more outright lies even than internal rhymes.  The road you didn’t take hardly comes to mind, does it?  Yes it sodding does, every day of your life, Ben, and don’t you kid yourself.  The yearnings fade, the longings die, you learn to bid them all goodbye – no you don’t learn, they just go and you don’t necessarily want to part with them.  The song is a nightmarish counterweight to “My Way” – regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention; this song is about regrets that haunt you, blight you, because of choices that you made that were as grim as the Reaper himself.

I don't remember at all, sings Ben, more in relief than regret.  Dementia, like this song, is at least partly about forgetting.  Much more than that – cognitive impairment, loss of function, growing dependence.  But “memory problems” can be a helpful euphemism.  And I read the lyric – as if I don’t have it by heart, I know the song so well – and find something new in it in the context of Dad’s dementia.  There is, as of now, D-day, a “Dennis he’ll never be”.  There are not only roads he didn’t take but roads he can’t take, they’re closed to him.  They go uphill, to new experiences, new information and that’s a challenge now.  Like his legs, his mind can’t really cope with uphill.  From here on it’s downhill all the way.

No one remembers the Ben who never was, but in Sondheim's ending there is a hint of panic that no-one will remember the Ben who made the choices, who took the roads, that made him who he is today.  If our ability to remember is the glue that holds our personality together, it is being remembered by others that gives us value.  So if no-one remembers us, who are we?  But as long as we are remembered as we were, we are not lost.  Even if we feel lost.