The Last Dance

1994 was a year of "Lasts."

Mom was diagnosed with cancer in March 1994 although she was first misdiagnosed in January and treated for pleurisy for two months.

One of the hardest things about "Her Cancer Year" was having to work through most of it.  I had returned to my old college job at the video store and worked most nights alone.  By day, I accompanied her and Dad to chemo and radiation appointments when I could.  By night, I would stand at the register crying into my turquoise windbreaker between customers.  The same windbreaker she bought me for my trip the New York only seven months before our lives changed forever.  It was awful.  I could barely function.

One night ~ a couple of weeks before her treatments started ~ I noticed a strange car in the parking lot for hours at work.  A few rows back but facing the store.  The same car was there the next night.  I called the cops, but they basically did nothing ~ said the guy was waiting for someone or something like that.  But my gut told me something was still wrong.  And so my parents played cop for one night and came to the store one hour before closing to guide me home.  

Mom and Dad always let us play their old records from the 50s and 60s.  All three of us kids developed a love for music of yesteryear.  I fell in love with Bobby Darin from the time I was only 7 or 8 years old, and at 29 years old now, I would play all of the cassette tapes I could find that duplicated my parents' old albums right there in the little video store.  

And to my amazement, Mom and Dad suddenly started dancing the jitterbug right there in the store.  Only the three of us were there, and they had the stage all to themselves.  And for a moment, we forgot she was dying.  Her treatments had not yet even begun.  The chemo had not made her even sicker than she was right then.  Her hair was still wavy and beautiful.  And there she was dancing with Dad as if it were the first day of the rest of her life.  Because basically it still was.  And that was how she was.  She knew how to live in the moment.

Stage 4 Lung Cancer was not going to stop her from being Marcia for any minute of "Her Cancer Year" ~ She would be there for us right up until the end.

And maybe the guy out in the car was some Angel in Disguise ~ not the bandit we thought he was ~ because there he was ~ watching the store as if it were all meant to be. 

Bobby Darin sang in the background while my parents danced their last dance together.

And for those three glorious minutes, the world was still magical and not so scary.