Is That All There Is?

I was about sixteen years old when I first heard a song sung by Peggy Lee, called ``If That's All There Is.''

I remember my mother playing it on our stereo, while singing and dancing with a pretend partner in our tiny living room. She seemed at the same time, both beautiful and lonely. It made me overwhelmingly sad.

In this song, she sings about having a number of incredible experiences, And at the end of each experience, she feels a great disappointment and sings, ``Is that all there is?

"Is That All There Is?'' (written by Stoller & Lieber) is actually taken from a story called ``Disillusionment'' by Thomas Mann (written when he was twenty).

The narrator begins a conversation with a fellow countryman. The man asks, "Do you know what disillusionment is? Not a miscarriage in small unimportant matters, but the great and general disappointment which everything, all of life, has in store?"

He tells how, as a small boy, the house caught fire; yet as they watched it burn down he was thinking, "So this is a house on fire? Is that all?"

And ever since then, life has been a series of disappointments; all the great experiences have left him with the feeling: "Is that all?" ... And one day, death will come, and he expects it to be the last great disappointment. "Is this all?"

The song sung by Peggy Lee, ends just as Thomas Mann's story does, with the idea that death will be just one more disappointment. The verse to this song is actually spoken rather than sung...
Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that's all there is, my friend, Then let's keep dancing...

I wish I could talk with my mom about the song, but she's no longer here... I wonder what disappointments death brought her.

I beleive I was afraid to ask back then, that I didn't want to know all of the sadness in her life. It was enough just to watch.

Now, I too know that life can bring many disappointments, and like my mom, I just keep dancing.

MKC