Dancing With The Dead

Ta-tum, ta-tum, rat-a-tat-tat, ta-tum; I will never forget the sound, that particular sound on a certain October morning. It was one week following the Autumn Equinox. Just another neighborhood drumming moment- normal in my community, but on this day, the beat to dancing feet synchronized something most surreal, forever altering my vision of the deceased.

It began as my usual day; coffee on the balcony, cigarette in hand. Knowing I should quit meant nothing in the early hours when all was quiet and meditative insights partnered with precisely timed puffs. A puff here and there did no justice as opposed to the rhythmic hand swirling motions. Whirling my ciggie clockwise or in a figure eight and watching the smoke twirls dance was more my thing, all while sipping my favorite medium roasted brew.

8 am, the drums began. This was odd. Neighborhood drumming always started precisely at 10. Everyday. This was a sidestep from my routine, but I went with it, immediately thinking to myself, "Yeah, this is my jam." So I obeyed an inner calling and set my mug down, making my way down the balcony stairs into the yard.

Still a little sleepy-eyed, my body felt heavy, like a stack of something peculiar was weighing me down. It was foggy. A cool foggy, October morning, and the only sound available to me besides the drumming was the pigeons' rattle-cooing as they flew from my rooftop, dropping three white feathers, floating to earth, side-by-side. Heaven's helpers, angel messages- perhaps, but the feather's slow-mo descent felt like an extra added instrument to the continuing ta-tum, rat-a-tat-tat, ta-tum.

I let my silvering blonde hair down from my scrunchie, whipping my hair back. A gush of wind gave my flyaways breath. Suddenly, the weight on my shoulders lifted, and a jumping down perception was confirmed by the feeling of many feet setting onto the soil.

Forth, they came. First, it was Jean, my youngest two children's dearly departed grandmother, "Aunt Jean," most called her. She died young, losing her battle with addiction. Next came Issac, my long departed brother-in-law. Brain cancer took him, but Aids was the underlying perpetrator. He stopped taking his medication, believing that smoking weed had cured him. He was wrong. Next came my Aunty Sue, who passed on my birthday several years ago. Pneumonia took her peacefully in her sleep. Last, but certainly not least, came Ivy, my youngest daughter, whom I miscarried twenty-some odd years ago.

"Totem pole, totem pole," a passing crow's subsong, "Your deceased family just jumped off the totem pole you've been carrying with you."

While African and Native roots traced familial generations, never once did I consider the crow's most obscure revelation.

Head to the clouds, and most confused, the passing crow uttered one final message, just as the three falling feathers hit the ground: "Now you release the barriers, preventing interaction. You are there, they are here. Two versions coexisting."

And so, the feet jumped down, four sets of two, down, they came, and the dance began...

It began as energy, not a visual of long-lost loved ones, but the without-a-doubt presence that comes only from complete knowing.

I knew it. They were here. I knew it because I was there. Swirling cigarette smoke painted clockwise and in figure eights timed to the 8 am drumbeats, drafted me to their world, one beyond, but not so far away as most might imagine. An October thinning veil gave me access, access to the foggy portal, the film sticking to the sky that kept one foot in the physical world while the other stepped into the unknown.

I was there, with them, bringing them home so we could align with one purpose and one purpose only-to dance.

And so we did.

The drumbeats rolled on; Jean, Isaac, Sue, Ivy, and I danced. I felt the shifting air with each turn on their ethereal bodies. I heard the dampened ground squish, a collective squish, as we stomped our feet, keeping pace with neighborhood pulsation.

I reached out, and we all joined hands. They from there, and I from here, side-by-side, we celebrated. Communities, two; one known to me and known to them once-upon-a-time, and the other, a place somewhere, somewhere else, where the feeling might feel surreal to another, but it felt like only a whisper from my present stance.

My stance: a parallel me strolls through the beloved lost ones' valley now and then, especially when the veil thins in autumn. Astral projection, my night walks on the astral plane, my day jaunts when time and energy line up just right. I raise my frequency, often without realizing, but the journey confirms that the deceased are intertwined with the living.

I am there and here; they are here and there.

The drumming ends on its final note, and the sun emerges from the clouds, dissolving the fog, casting one long, thick ray of light across the yard. I see them, all of them, finally in real-time. Diamonds, my loved ones are diamonds, glistening on a cool October morning. All smiling, their best pearly whites before vanishing like vapor, returning to the afterlife.

I walk up my balcony stairs and grab my coffee mug, still warm and undeniably delicious. I light up a smoke, take a puff, and on my exhale, I twirl my ciggie clockwise, making air space eight patterns. My loved ones are home now, and I follow. Parallel lines drawn in meditative rituals afford me a lifelong passport.

I shall dance with them again, at will, not only when the Autumn Equinox comes a calling.

I dance with the dead because we are always side-by-side.

***

Author's Note: Typically, I don't write a lot of fiction, mainly because I believe I suck at it, but I am throwing my hat into the ring with this challenge. Please, don't throw tomatoes- Thanks in advance! 😉

PS: While fiction, my characters are based on real relatives who have passed on.