When You Can't Dance

There are moments that turn into hours that become days, days where the ever-lurking weight of despair holds on like a wet sweater. 

I fell into such a place a few weeks back, and I still feel the tendrils of yarn and thread trying to reweave themselves around me.  It happened so quickly, I'm really not sure I was aware of it until several days of being curled up on the couch had passed, and I caught the look in one of my children's eyes.  She was not quite sure that something was wrong, but knowing all too well that all was not right.

Dance was beyond me.  As much as I knew it was what I needed, I couldn't make myself move like that.  Even going for walks with my husband was met with a silent shake of the head, or a simple "Not today, hon" as I found some small thing in hand to take my focus.

What do you do when you can't give your body the prompt that it's time for it to do its work and help heal the spirit, help the mind find a little clarity and lift that damn fog?

You trick it.

Trick it with music.  We as humans are so in tuned to music and rhythm that we might as well call it another sense.  Is it because our mother's rhythmic heartbeat is the first thing we hear?  The blood of life flowing all around us in a rhythm so ancient it predates sentience.


I sang to Yvonne so much when she was an infant, it was no surprise that she was a child who always sang and danced around the house.  I will never forget picking her up from a concert event when she was 16.  She was FLYING from the high the music and dance had given her.  And good heavens, she stank.  Sweat was covered with sweat and she glowed from within and from without.  The drive home had her head out the window, singing at the top of her lungs, and turning to laugh at me as she tried to explain, over and over again, how incredible it was to just DUMP all the crap she had been going through at school, right there on that dance floor, right smack in the middle of a mosh pit of teens.

I couldn't sing when in the bottom of that hole, but I could listen to music.  The music made me breathe, it made me move side to side and tap a finger or a toe.  The key, of course, was to put on something that made me happy, that took me to places before we lost our beautiful girl, that reminded me of laughing.

I listened to REO Speedwagon's Roll With The Changes.  That one always gets me...Well, it gets to me.  And, of all things, "The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald," got me up and cleaning.  That connection was clear- I heard that a lot as a kid on Saturday mornings doing a few chores around the house.  It's my cleaning song.  I pictured mom in another room, dusting or vacuuming.

So I cleaned, and the next day, I danced.  And the next, and the next.   I went on walks. I worked on a painting project with an audio book constantly playing in my earbuds.

I'm still trying to step around the holes that open up everywhere since we lost our oldest child to the senselessness and selfishness of a teen who wanted to go drinking and driving. As her friends share birthday events, turning 27, Yvonne will forever be 23.  So adding to that the absolute horror of watching my kind, beautiful mother starve to death over 30 days because of cancer this last December has made the holes much larger and harder to avoid.

I miss them.  It's as simple as that.  And with mom leaving, it feels like losing dad all over again, as weird as that sounds.  It's been almost 18 years, but I think of him every day these last few weeks.  I miss them.

Did I mention my wonderful, sweeter-than-anyone grandmother died a month before mom?  I really think she wanted to leave before another one of her children was taken from her.  She'd already lost two sons, I don't think she could handle losing mom as well. I haven't even begun to address the loss of her, (though the old song "Barbry Ellen" plays in my mind often these days, hinting at what I need to face.)

But right now, I have to do what I have to do to keep going for my family, and for myself.  I made the decision two months after Yvonne was killed that I was not going to leave the planet.  I was going to stay, and be present for my family.  That promise is what keeps me trying.  Three, incredible children are here who need a mom, and that crazy man who married me needs me as well.

So when I can't dance, it will be music, loud and fiery, that helps me find the nooks and crannies to jam my fingers and toes into to climb out of that hole.  And in that loud music, I hear Yvonne yelling out the window, telling me how to just dump it all out there, on the floor. "Mom! It was unbelievable! I just danced. It. All. Out."

Keep dancing, sweet girl.  Keep dancing.