Confined to the house on a wet, windy, cold afternoon. Jim is clicking through the TV channels. And then I heard it: “Look down, look down …” The opening song from Les Misérables! He’d found a special presentation of the musical, and we sat all afternoon mesmerized by the show.
We had seen Les Misérables on Broadway together several times, but sitting here in our living room, my heart and soul were once again overcome with the power of the story – and I recalled the first time I saw it – before I’d met Jim.
It was 1986, about a year after my husband, Pat, had died. My daughter was trying to set me up on a date with her friend’s bachelor uncle. I had no interest in dating, but when he called and said he had 2 tickets for Les Misérables, he got my attention.
He explained that it was a matinée and that he would pay for the show and provide transportation – which turned out to be a school bus hired by a group of middle school teachers – but explained he was on a tight budget and suggested we go “dutch treat” for lunch. How could I resist. Although I‘d spent all of my childhood and lived most of my adult years within shouting distance of New York City, I had never been to a Broadway show.
I don’t remember his name, but he was a pleasant enough person and we had a “companionable” lunch at a non-descript diner. When we got to the theater the usher showed us to our seats and I was immediately enthralled with the ambience. Then the lights went down and the curtain went up. The sense of a crowded theater faded and suddenly I was alone, under the spell of the music and that powerful production.
The visual and lyrical magnificence took my breath away! My heart soared with every crescendo. My chest pounded with every drumbeat. I suffered with Fantine in the pain she endured for love of her daughter. I cried with the child Cosette wandering through the woods, and rejoiced when, as a beautiful young woman, she fell in love with Marius. And when Jean Valjean raised his eyes and his voice singing “God on high … I prayed along with all my heart.
But nothing compares to the passion and beauty of the final scene. To this day I can close my eyes and see that stage: Cosette, her beautiful wedding gown cascading in long, white, rippling folds across the stage; The excitement of marriage with the hope and promise of love and new life; And the simple beauty of Fantine welcoming Jean Valjean to the light of everlasting peace – the fulfillment of his life.
Perhaps it was because, at that first show, my husband’s death was still so fresh in my mind, but as I experienced the intensity and passion of that final scene I was overcome with emotion. On that one stage, in that one scene, I saw all the wonder and beauty of life and of death, and the power and beauty of love transcending both!
Fast forward 7 years to when Jim and I were married – and 27 more years of sharing our life and our love – to the strange times of today with pandemic quarantine. The message of Les Misérables is just as powerful and still ignites my soul. “To love another person is to see the face of God!”
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