Dancing with Ghosts

Dancing with Ghosts

              I have had no more losses than most people my age who live here in Canada.  It’s quite likely that I’ve actually had less. Experiencing loss through the death of someone we love is inescapable and part of life – a sad part, but part of life nevertheless.

              In my family I have lost both of my grandmothers never having known either of my grandfathers.  I have said good bye to both of my parents and, perhaps most heartbreakingly, two of my siblings.  At age 45 it sometimes feels like too much – too early, but it is just life.  I have buried them all with some kind of tradition; a funeral, a gathering where stories are told and tears are shed.  Our good-byes have been necessary and final.

              And yet.

              And yet sometimes I find myself dancing with the ghosts of those I’ve lost.

              It starts with a little tap on the shoulder.  You know the one….when you know that you’re all alone in the room, in your house or in your car….and then suddenly, you’re not.  And if you close your eyes and allow them entry, there they are.

              Sometimes it’s my grandma Hayes.  She was so tiny and oh so very English.  When she joins me for a visit there is a crumpet and a cup of tea – usually one brewed for the third time from the same bag.  And we dance.  We dance to something that might have been played during WWI or earlier.  It is not a specific song and yet we dance.

              My dad comes on occasion.  He is always a little more formal as if he wants to be sure that he isn’t intruding.  My dad, tall and strong and capable right up until he wasn’t…my dad holds out his hand in invitation just as he did when I was a little girl and we dance.  With my dad it is often a waltz or sometimes we jive but whatever the genre my feet know exactly what to do just because he is leading me.  I still love dancing with my dad.

              My sister, well anything goes when she comes calling.  Very unlike my father Dale shows up with the music already blaring.  There is no request when she takes my hand; it’s more like a loving demand.  And we dance…to everything.  We writhe to the Monkees, we bang our heads to AC/DC or Burton Cummings and we sway and sing along in harmony to everything Simon and Garfunkle.  And my favourite part, when we have enough time, is when we can just sit with the big surround sound speakers and let Billy Joel wash over us.

              But there is never enough time to dance with my sister.  It always ends too soon.

              Every once in a while, on the rarest of occasions, my paternal grandma Polkinghorne comes to visit.  This is always an occasion for me because she comes to me standing on her feet and pulling her shoulders up to their full height.  See, I never knew her before her stroke so the grandma of my memory sits in a wheelchair and cannot speak.  Except when she taps me on the shoulder in my solitude she can speak and together we dance.  Sadly, the music we dance to is purely of my imagination because I ever knew her well enough to choose what she would have chosen.

              But we move and dance in ways that I never knew her to do in life.

              And then just as quietly as she came, she is gone.

              In the same subtle way every once in a while my brother comes and taps himself in.  Of all of my dancing ghosts Wade is the one who hurts my heart the most.  But at least when he arrives to dance with me he isn’t shrivelled and ravaged by cancer as he was in those last weeks I spent with him before he died.

              No, when he comes to me he is tall and very handsome with twinkling eyes and an ever present smirk/grin on his face.  We don’t really dance, Wade and I.  We stand together – not too close – and the music is the background for our moment.  It is not a specific tune that plays but it envelopes us, and I don’t cry until he has to leave me in my aloneness again.

              And while we never dance I miss just standing together with him letting the music surround our togetherness.

              On the best days when I am alone somewhere my mom shows up to dance with me.  In death as in life my mom has no boundaries so sometimes she shows up with I’m in a meeting, or even when I’m leading worship!  Tap, tap and there she is moving her body in her infamous slightly chicken looking head bob dance.

              I love dancing with my mom. We dance to everything.  We dance to Sing Along with Mitch Miller songs, to beautiful 40’s songs like “Blue Moon”, to long ballads by Gordon Lightfoot and if we’re lucky, we even dance to the hymn “Lord of the Dance”.  Mom and I dance through the soundtrack of my life.  Sometimes the movements are extreme and crazy and big while at others they are subtle, slow and loving.  Just like life.

              I love it when my mama comes to dance. It took so long to say our final good-bye.  When she comes back to me – even if I’m with other people and busy doing other things, my heart always lurches with delight and the pain of missing her all at once.

              But then we dance.  And I know that she’ll be back again because of all of my loves and losses she is the one who never truly leaves me.

              My losses are no different than anyone else’s May be yours are more dramatic or more expected but they are losses all the same.  And we all have other ghosts – the ones who still live out there in the world but who try to haunt us anyway.  I choose not to dance with them.

              But I do love to dance with the others.  One day, when you're all alone busy doing some mundane task or another pay attention to the tap on the shoulder.  It might be your chance.  And then...dance with your own ghosts for a while.