Why Dancing to MJ’s “Thriller” like the “Mombies” Is A Super Self-Care Coping Step After losing My Mom to Cancer

By LookAbility Club Staffer

At some point in our life, we all have had our own share of experience with some form of loss whether it’s financial loss or other forms of personal or professional losses. The list can go on — the loss of a pet, or even the loss of a family member or a friend to a terminal illness. This loss can feel like something in your life is permanently broken. It’s can feel as though a special, sentimental glass that you used to drink your favorite glass of red wine, cold beer or health foodie smoothie is broken forever. Plus the loss can even feel horrific like our life is falling out of control and even feel like the sense of horror that’s personified in MJ’s Thriller video yet there is the resilient sense of power that gets so many of us up on our feet to dance to a song like this to celebrate the love we will always have for the person we lost or the good times we had before the loss.

No matter what kind of loss you have had to endure, you may never stop questioning if you did everything you possibly could have done to avoid the painful ending that you now know and that you no longer can avoid. It really did happen. For me, I know I can never go back and change the outcome.

Despite the pain of loss, have you ever thought about all the ways you could honor the good times when things were going well and when you had that special person or that loved one you lost even in the midst of the loss. I consider it a form of self-care when I take time to do this. You can do this any day of the year for as many times as you need to do this. I find that today brings even more meaning because it’s April 29th- International Dance Day. It makes me not only reflect but put into action the fact that I need to take care of my own self-care and make it work with what’s best for me because no one else will be coming to pick up the broken pieces. Whether it’s dancing to MJ’s Thriller or dancing during my exercise routine or dancing while doing a little gardening, it can be priceless when we look to discover the our own rhythm in life even in the midst of loss.

Most of us, if not all of us have all had difficult days in our life dealing with loss which we will never ever forget. I was in disbelief when my mother received a medical diagnosis of terminal Cancer. Whatever little I knew about Cancer compared to the knowledge of the doctors, I knew it was bad. But my family and I wasted no time to get her the essential medical care and treatment she would need. I would drive her to all her medical appointments at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital but when it was ultimately confirmed with subsequent testing that my mother’s condition was truly terminal that’s when I began to hear the medical doctors using medical terms that were new to me like palliative care and quality of life in reference to what we needed to do for Mom.

Despite the reality of the seriousness of her medical situation, my Mom almost always had a Super Mom attitude and a powerful spirit throughout her entire battle. The end of her life came almost exactly within the timeframe that the doctors predicted when they said she had a year and added more or less but I believe it was her Super Mom spirit which gave her several months more than a year. But when the end finally came, the sense of disbelief still lingered with me and even her funeral seemed so surreal. It felt like I was having an out of body experience as I sat in my family’s car watching my mother’s casket in the hearse being driven to the place where she would be buried- her final resting place. I can say that the pain of losing a Mom who I had a close relationship to a serious condition like Cancer never truly goes away. In fact, professional grief counselors and experts on grief have said that we should allow ourselves to grieve without feeling that there is a timeline for grief because essentially there is no timeline for grief.

However, it’s important to seek support from friends and family and to continue to live a healthy lifestyle by taking care of your physical health and emotional well-being. This also includes getting enough sleep and exercise and eating well. Plus professional grief counselors recommend honoring the memory of your loved one.

One day while watching TV, I heard David Muir, the anchor of ABC World News talk about the Mombies from Fairfield Connecticut who are a group of Moms who transform from Moms to Zombies when they dress as Zombies and dance to songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” to raise funds for breast cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Research Center. They present their spooky dance performances to the community on Halloween Day every year.

When I heard some of the lyrics to “Thriller” one of the lyrics stuck out to me- “Creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize y’alls neighborhood. ” This made me think of how receiving a terminal diagnosis of Cancer can be a terrorizing experience not only from my own experience with my mother but probably for so many more people among the approximate 10 million people who die from Cancer every year according to recent statistics.

That’s when in the midst of experiencing the terrorizing reality that terminal Cancer really did take my mother away like a creature crawling in the night for blood, I also experienced pleasant memories and the nostalgia of my Mom which so often is outweighed by a sense of pain but I began to dance along to “Thriller” and follow along with the steps of the Mombies and it felt good.

I even got a few of my friends to recreate the Zombie look and dance with me on Halloween, although we did not quite compare to the Mombies, it felt like fun and it was like if I was having a super self-care moment that was long overdue.

I have to admit, it not only felt good for the moment but it felt like I got a release from the pain of losing my mother whether this would last forever or not it was worth it despite the fact I was fully aware that experts have said that there is no timeline for grief.  But I do see why people say that the Mombies put the fun in fundraising. To  see the real life photos and videos of the Mombies engaged in these spooktacular performances visit their website at www.mombies.org where if you’re interested you can also support this cause.

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