Sweet dreams and sunbeams

My mother was a burlesque dancer. I say this with pride. After all, she brought me up in a swirl of sparkly nipple tassels, fringes, music, dancing, instilling in me a sense of whorled wonderment. 'Play Dream a Little Dream' she would say, and my father would literally sweep her off her sequined-slipper clad feet, spinning her round and round. Only my father could make her this dizzy. She would throw her head back, the sequins a blur of starry colour. Sometimes she would fall on the floor melodramatically. 'Again' she would insist. She would stand in front of me, looking down, batting those dark fake eyelashes. 'Dance with me.' she would say. Grabbing my wrists, she would pulled me towards her, my book clasped in my fingertips at arms length. There was never any point resisting her magnetic pull. I would be allowed to place my book open at the page I had reached on the seat of the pink velvet armchair. I would turn towards her and offer a gentlemanly bow. In my child's mind, she was invincible, her energy infectious.
As time went by, though, she became thinner and thinner, the sparkle still trying to shine through the heavily made up face but it was a mere mask. One day I came home from school, my book lay open on the chair, where I had left it and peeking out from under the fringes, were the toes of my mother's sequined slippers.
My father took me to the hospital. The sparkle had gone, my mother, sunken eyed and frail, tried to smile her gem of a smile. She winced. 'Dance with me' she whispered. I placed my book on the hospital chair, open as always, patted it as if it were a trusty pet. I was delaying the moment I would hold those skeletal hands, her nails caked in chipped scarlet varnish. I wrapped my boyish hands around hers and we swayed together in tune to a soundless music.
'Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you"
Birds singing in the sycamore trees
Dream a little dream of me.'