Let’s Dance
Sunday 28th August 2022
It’s now 48 hours since I had my first chemotherapy session. After yesterday’s walk around my local community, I’m nervous about doing too much. Yet I have made my commitment to move through cancer so move I must, even if it is to the nearest lamppost and then back to the sofa.
I wait until the sun has almost set for the day before I get dressed and grab my phone. When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer I was worried that I wouldn’t want to listen to music. I’m relieved that that’s not the case.
As I move slowly up the street, I feel out of breath and heart heavy. The inner monologue, which until now has been silenced by hours of Minecraft with my little boy, starts to whirr. My Fierce Feminist playlist isn’t working for me today. It’s not distracting me.
I have cancer. Keep walking. I feel sick. Keep walking. I’VE HAD CHEMO. Keep. Walking.
I get to the top of my road and I’m surrounded by plastic barriers, set up by the council for the latest road works. There is a temporary pathway snaking off up the road and beyond the brow of the hill. In normal times this wouldn’t faze me, but it feels utterly overwhelming. I can feel the tears building, the decision to turn back forming, the resolve crumbling as I stare at the im/possible task ahead.
And then I hear it, coming out through my ear pods and up through the decades simultaneously. When I was little and I was sad, my Mam would play Chris Rea’s “Let’s Dance” at full blast and we would dance for all the world. I’d added it to a playlist when I was diagnosed with cancer, but was yet to listen to it and I hadn’t heard it in so long. The opening bars were playing right on cue, and it felt like my Mam was walking down the hill. For a quick second I thought I was going to sob, and then…something flicked in me. I decided to take this for what my Mam would have interpreted this as:
an invitation, or knowing my Mam, a dare.
I started dancing. Not on the spot either. I danced my way through the long temporary barriers that snaked along the main road, but when the barriers stopped, I didn’t. The combination of the pinky brown sky that we are fortunate to see in Edinburgh at this time of year, the memory of me and my Mam dancing by the hi-fi when times were tough, the bright outfit that I had thrown on with my cheap sneakers from Dorothy Perkins, and the feeling that in this moment I was alive and nothing else mattered created one of the happiest and calmest feelings I’ve ever had.
“One thing is certainly true
This moment’s for me and for you
While there’s not a thing that we can do
Well, let’s dance”
So I did. I continued to dance along the main road, and around the corner back into my street. I don’t recall cars passing me, but who knows? Who cares! It felt amazing. I’ve decided that this is where I will meet my Mam, who I miss terribly at the moment.
On the Sunday after chemo, we will dance.
“Let’s Dance” Chris Rea
When you sing of the joy only love can bring
Heaven knows, it’s in my heart and my soul
We’re caught in a world full of tears
So many bad times and fears
So while there’s a chance and you’re near
Well, let’s dance
Yeah, yeah, let’s dance
Ah, yeah
There’s a world far away from the one we see
There’s a dream I will never let go
One thing is certainly true
This moment’s for me and for you
While there’s not a thing that we can do
Well, let’s dance
Yeah, yeah, let’s dance
Ah, yeah, yeah
Well, let’s dance
Let’s dance
Let’s dance
Let’s dance
Well, let’s dance
Ah, let’s dance
Let’s dance
Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah
