Dance

WE'LL DANCE AS LONG
AS THE MUSIC IS PLAYING

Journal of Healing – June 2, 2004

By Mary Koch

I was disappointed that no one danced at my 60th birthday party until I thought about it later. Then I realized there’d been a whole lot of dancing going on.

Friends and family arranged a boisterous celebration with music by the "Mood Swings," a combo that specializes in tunes of the ‘40s and ‘50s.

Spring rains forced everyone to crowd under the roofed section of our patio. That left barely enough room for toe-tapping. At one point, when the sun broke through, I thought about taking my husband for a rhythmic spin around the rain-soaked patio in his wheelchair or just holding his hand while executing a few swing steps on my own.

I do that sometimes, when we’re alone, but I wasn’t sure he’d appreciate me making a spectacle of us. So I kept time on his knee with my fingers, trying not to pine for times past when we danced.

The truth finally hit me the next morning as I was dressing John.

* * *

PEOPLE WHO are totally paralyzed are most easily dressed while in bed. It involves lots of turning from side to side as underwear, pants and shirt are worked onto the body.

With each turn I bend John’s knees, first one then the other, so I can tilt his legs in the direction of the turn. Then, with one hand behind his hips and the other behind his shoulders, I draw his body toward me. John tucks his head and uses what torso strength he can muster to help with the turn.

Lately I’ve had a sore shoulder, which makes the turns more challenging. A therapist advised me to "ground" myself before each turn, becoming aware of my feet, feeling them inside my socks. From that point, I feel the strength throughout my body. All of me bears the weight, taking pressure off my sore shoulder.

As I turn John, I lean over him in a sideways embrace. That was my light-bulb moment.

"We’re dancing!" I realized.

Of all the dances John and I have enjoyed together, the most beautiful began more than 10 years ago when stroke paralyzed his body and we were forced to learn a whole new kind of choreography.

* * *

THERE HAVE BEEN people to teach us along the way. While John was in rehab in Seattle, we met Carolyn Martin, a remarkable woman who was born with severe cerebral palsy and, on top of that, was sexually abused as a teen-ager. Her passion for life is summed up in the title of her autobiography, "I Can’t Walk So I’ll Learn To Dance."

There was our friend Sharlene, who made me promise before her death from ALS, to play "Lord of the Dance" for her funeral. The chorus includes the line, "Dance then, wherever you may be." The "wherever" does not refer to a place but a state of being.

To dance is to celebrate life. To dance is to move in harmony with all creation. To dance is to follow the rhythm of love in your heart.

People mingling and mixing at my birthday party were executing a kind of old-fashioned square dance without even thinking about it: do-si-do and allemande left, circle round home to your partner.

Sometimes in life’s dance, we miss a step and fall flat on our face. Sometimes we’d prefer a simple waltz, but the orchestra plays a rumba and we don’t even know the steps.

All we need to do is get grounded, feel our feet inside our socks and follow the music that’s playing in our lives.

(Mary Koch writes about health care issues and her experiences as a family caregiver. Her husband, retired newspaper publisher John E. Andrist, was severely disabled by a stroke in 1993. They welcome your letters at P.O. Box 3346, Omak WA 98841 or e-mail them.)

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