A letter to my Mom

* This piece was adapted from an earlier entry I called "What else can I do but dance?" I have submitted this version to be included in a collection, called "Letters to Mama".

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Dear Mom,

What else can I do but dance under the heavy pitch of this darkness?

Crying isn’t enough sometimes. Grief of this depth requires creative outlets – and movement. Movement of the physical body in and around and through physical space. Pain like this begs to be recognized and released. In this case, it bends everything into a beckoning musical wind, and blows holes through those dark truths that are bottomless.

You didn’t merely enjoy dancing, Mom. It was a portal for you. A channel through which to breathe in and out of sacred atmospheres; to unleash the beautiful beast of your love and rage; and to be, meaningfully.

When I dance, I feel your heartbeat in my feet. I feel you pushing my arms out and waving them wildly about. I feel my face contorting and my eyes closing, as if trying desperately to shut out too bright a light. And when my eyes are closed, I can see my own face against the backdrop of the heavens; and it is your face inside all of the deeper reflections.

The unbearable weight of the empty space where your body once twirled, so alive, is a straight jacket of the cruelest material. But struggling in it, kicking and screaming and biting, won’t remove or even loosen the bondage of its shackles. Nothing will ever defy that metal. But dancing is somehow a better tool than anger in battles of the heart. The joy about it is simply a stronger force.

When I curse God through vengeful tears, running at the truth with a battering ram only to be knocked back, I am a tired child fighting bed time. The straps only grasp more tightly. I hug myself violently with those arm restraints. But no matter how hard I try, with the blade of anger, I cannot cut my way out.

So instead, I do what you would do, Mom. I dance. And when I dance, God knows and acknowledges my suffering. He lifts me up and lets me mourn in his arms. For the end of your life; for the sadness that so richly infiltrates the entire flow of mine. He rocks me gently and strokes my hair like you would have done. And tells me that it is okay to cry; for the end of the world, and for the beauty so endlessly vast in the unbroken circle of eternity.

And my body moves about like a furious gale. Fertile drum rhythms produce violent tear storms with jagged lightning.
I feel in that rain the fact that your love made me. My spirit screams and spins and soars.

In these moments, it is dance or die.
So I dance.

I love you beyond the horizon of time. You keep me safe.
Liz