All You Need is Love

A Beatles Resurrection

“When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance.” – John Lennon

The atmosphere was electric, and my senses were on fire. Acrobats, gymnasts, and dancers were performing in time to Beatles music across a massive stage. It was the Beatles Love Cirque du Soleil performance in the Las Vegas Mirage Hotel.

I had come to the show with my nearly 80-year-old mother, an enthusiastic companion on a trip to Vegas for my daughter’s volleyball tournament. The Beatles were the music of her youth and she had been looking forward to the show for months. In the row in front of us was a veritable Beatles groupie; a gray-haired women clad in vintage 1960’s attire clapping her hands in the air and singing Beatles songs.

The first few notes of ‘Twist and Shout’ came on and the audience went wild, cheering and whistling for the performers doing the twist on top of a Volkswagen bus, painted with flowers and peace signs. The music brought out in me an overwhelming feeling of happiness and love. Happy, happy music in which you could simply lose yourself.

The Volkswagen bus on stage was a classic! This kind of bus had been a part of my parents’ love story before I was born. In the late 1960’s, they had traveled around Europe in a Volkswagen pop-up camper just like the one on stage. They eventually landed in Spain and followed the bull fights around the country, a popular sporting event of the time. My appearance was a surprise – a joyful surprise – that necessitated that the nomads settle down and get a real job. They were in no hurry to grow up, until I came along.

The performance was rich with the symbols of the 1960’s rebellion. The performers were awash in fluorescently bright and loud pinks, yellows, and pastel blues. Their hairstyles featured large, stunning Afros like that of Diana Ross, and the bouffant hairdos of Brigitte Bardot. The young people of the time were making political statements through fashion, music, dance, and their hippie lifestyle.

My Mom and I at the Beatles Love performance in Las Vegas.

More than anything, the performance evoked a joyful feeling of a simpler time. Why had the world become so complicated? His cancer was the simple answer. Really, it was my inability to accept his cancer. And all the fear and anxiety and grief that came along with it. Before his diagnosis, I could never have imagined that the repercussions of his cancer diagnosis would continue reverberating through me years after his diagnosis.

Did I feel the love and the freedom and the joy coursing through me? Oh, yes. It felt so good after the first hellacious year of his treatments and the constant worry that he might relapse in the second year. His second year of treatment had come and gone. Now, he was finishing a two-year course of Verzenio, an oral chemotherapy drug to kill any remaining cancer cells. I should feel relief, but the worry was still there. The happy Beatles music helped remind me of all the joy and love in this world.

The theater faded to black as the song ended and sparkling lights began to appear in the sky. A single female performer in a white dress was lowered from the top of the theater, surrounded only by blackness and dozens of twinkling lights. It was Lucy, of course. Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

The mesmerizing and rhythmic swinging of Lucy across the black sky with sparkling lights produced a subtle hypnosis in the audience. I could feel the pull and weight of this spell coming over me, almost commanding me to let go of any pain and sadness. Life was simple and beautiful. You don’t have to understand it all. Find the magic in the moment.

I looked at my mother sitting next to me, who was thoroughly enjoying herself. Groovy, I thought. Half a century after my arrival disrupted her days in the Volkswagen bus with my father, she and I were reliving the magic and love of this time. The love felt powerful, like a warm blanket wrapped around me. The more joy I felt, the less room there was for any pain. Cancer fears were being pushed out by the music.

The performance was building to a final number. It was the classic Beatles Song that I had been wishing and waiting for. All you need is love, love, they sang. Love is all you need. Nothing could be truer.

As the show ended, the performers gathered on the periphery of the stage to say goodbye to the audience while making the peace sing with their fingers or the heart shape with their hands. The woman in front of us jumped to her feet and lifted both arms to make a heart shape.

I understood her. Love and warmth filled my body from my head to toe. And for the first time in a long time, I felt carefree.