A dear friend of ours died recently; he dropped dead right there on the dance floor. And then he came back to life! It's all true and documented. What I can say with confidence, but can't entirely prove, is that the essence of dance is what brought him back to life. Here's the story, from my perspective.
John had some bad habits when it came to caring for himself, especially in terms of his diet. He loved fried foods and rich, fatty, sugary things, especially milkshakes. He hadn't had a checkup in years, and had developed a diabetic condition, although he wasn't aware of it. And although he carried considerable extra weight, he could still burn up the dance floor several nights each week, dancing for hours on end. John was dancing for joy, and nothing could get in the way of that.
Except dying, of course. On the night that he collapsed, John had been wheeling around the floor with his usual grace and vigor. During a break between songs, his heart seized up and he dropped to the floor. The dancers around him were shocked, of course, but several had the presence of mind to step forward and begin CPR.
Meanwhile, my cell phone rang at the Thai restaurant where my husband Mark and I were eating. We'd never been there before, and we seldom eat out. We were celebrating the beginning of my new school year, and our first as "empty nesters". Our friend David was on the line, very upset, and told me what had happened. He had called looking for contact numbers for John's daughters; like most of my social dance friends, our cell phones are laden with each other's numbers, but few of us have emergency contact info for each other, much less for ourselves.
"You're at Waltz Etcetera?" I exclaimed. "We're 3 minutes walking distance from you! I'll be right over." David was perplexed; "Why?", he asked, "the medics are already here." But I knew I could help somehow, so I ran the couple blocks, while Mark paid the bill and followed me over.
Dancers were scattered around the outer room, while the medics worked on John inside, on the dance floor. I could see them through the doorway, but I couldn't tell if they had managed to revive him. I think they were using the defibrillator still, and we knew the longer they worked, the slimmer the chances of John coming back to us.
I spotted our friend Kathleen, and called her over. We decided to gather everybody into a circle; it is natural to try to contain our worries, but so much stronger to acknowledge them together, and then refocus the energy. We asked our friends to imagine John grinning, whirling around the dance floor again: breathing, robust, and alive. We stood holding hands and sending him our collective life force.
Meanwhile, I found out later that several women were doing the same work for John beside the medics. One had scanned his subtle energy patterns, and received the impression that John was deciding whether or not to return to this life.
Finally, the medics got his heart started. All they could tell us as they carried him out on the stretcher was that he was "very sick". Zacharia and Henry, the hosts of Waltz Etcetera, invited us onto the dance floor, to form a second circle of support. We shared our thoughts on John, and our wishes for his healing.
And we kept this energy going in the weeks to follow, circulating updates on his condition to fellow dancers and to his family, through our e-mail lists. Many friends came to visit him in Intensive Care at Harborview hospital. Although he was unconscious for the first couple weeks, we sang to him, read uplifting stories, shared the latest scuttlebutt, and brought him music for when he woke up. All this time, we were focused on John revived, John spinning once again around the dance floor, John awake and alive. No one knew what the outcome would be, but it certainly seemed that a long period of rehabilitation would be required, if John did revive. Some dancers fretted that the CPR treatment hadn’t been done in an optimal way, and his brain might have suffered from oxygen deprivation.
One Sunday, Mark and I stopped in to view the Impressionist exhibit at SAM, on our way to visit John. As I was wondering the galleries, I had a "subtle visit" with John, a kind of lucid daydream. He said he'd been given a new, heavenly assignment, and he was very excited about it. He would be the personal assistant to the Angel Ambassador of dance. I asked if this meant he wouldn't be coming back to us. He just grinned. By now, I understand that these potent imaginings, which feel every bit like "real" visits with the spirit of the other person, are metaphorical, and can't be relied upon as foretelling the future; at least, not in the "dense world" context.
The dense world is the world we know by our 5 senses, and call "real" because everybody around us can generally agree to it. Of course, there is great variation in how we sense the world: what is a lovely perfume to one is an overpowering odor to another, for example. I have come to realize that the dense world is a facade; not an illusion, exactly, but not the substance of life, either. Essence lies beneath the surface, in the subtle realm, most easily accessed through the heart. You know that, right?
We said goodbye to the gorgeous facades of the paintings, so beautifully illustrating this combination of dense subject matter and the essence found in color and light. The hospital was a stark contrast of white walls and dull colors. John still lay unconscious in Intensive Care, but his body was twitching; this seemed like a good sign. "Are you thinking about dancing?" I asked. He moved his head slightly up and down. "Yes! That's good, John!" we applauded him. His faithful medical team wasn't allowed to give us any details, but we felt he had turned the corner, and was coming back to life.
In a matter of weeks, John was out of hospital, working with medical staff to reconfigure his diet and do physical therapy. His recovery was absolutely amazing! We were all convinced a miracle had occurred when he managed to attend the "Dance Sensation" weekend, a full 3 days of Lindy Hop and Swing. He had collapsed, and died, on Labor Day, and returned to the dance floor one week before Halloween. His medical team can be thanked and credited with keeping his vital functions going. And his dance team can be credited with assisting in keeping his spirit engaged in life.
John agrees. He used to shake his head at my crazy ideas about spirit and matter; now he grins knowingly. He says adamantly, "I didn't see any white light!” But he knows, for sure, the power of connection, of beneficial thoughts and prayers, and the healing force of our collective compassion.
Dance on, John!
