But Mom had her own celebrity defence: “Rockin’ Ronnie Hawkins cured himself of terminal pancreatic cancer!” she told me. (I highly doubted that.)
By the time Mom invited me to do ayahuasca, I was still hoping that if I tried my best to be supportive, she’d come around to getting surgery. (Perhaps ayahuasca would give her a vision of…reality?) But in the end it only reaffirmed her faith in the path she was taking. “I feel completely cleansed,” Mom declared as we hit the road the next morning. After puking her guts up all night, I’m sure she was cleansed of something.
As the months passed, Mom became more convinced that her regimen was working. She forwarded me an article from a dubious-sounding organization called the Institute of Health Sciences; “The Surprising Benefits of Lemon!” claimed the citrus to be “10,000 times stronger than chemotherapy.” In her message, Mom wrote: “Not a day goes by without validation! You’ll be happy to know that I already take a fresh organic lemon drink every day.”
I was still nervous, but I resigned myself to thinking that it would probably take evidence of her cancer growing for her to finally snap out of it. As unfortunate as it would be, that’s what it would likely take to burst her bubble. It would be horrible if it came to that, but at least the doctors would still be able to help her. I was naive, but at the time, as far as I could see, a later-stage diagnosis was the worst-case scenario. It was the hope, or lie, that kept me going.
In the meantime, Mom continued to insist that she was feeling great. Her infrared sauna was supposedly helping, her energy was high, and she felt affirmed by her continued good health. She was now going around telling everyone that she had only “a touch of cancer.”
* * *
—
MEANWHILE THE ATMOSPHERE at work was getting progressively worse. As the show grew, so did Jian’s ego. He wanted more A-list celebrities, more live audience shows, more American stations, more publicity, more adulation. It was unsustainable. We didn’t need a biopsy to know our workplace was pathological.
In the early years, when I’d felt Jian had gone too far in swearing or yelling at me, I stood up to him a few times. But he was incapable of apologizing and would twist things around to make it seem as if I wasn’t dedicated enough, as if I was the problem. “You’re the only producer who has an issue,” he’d say. I’d leave our fights shaken, almost trembling, worried about what punishment awaited me. After finding myself removed from projects, I started to wonder whether standing up for myself was worth it.
At the start of the summer a few of us longtime producers began secretly meeting after work to discuss what to do. We chose the nearby Hooters for its sunny rooftop patio and yummy chicken wings, but mostly for the unlikelihood of running into our bosses there. Having learned early on that our individual complaints wouldn’t be taken seriously, we decided to draft a document outlining our grievances as a group. We called the document Red Sky, a cheeky play on our annual Blue Sky show-planning sessions in which we were supposed to dream up where to take the show next. However we never felt we could speak freely or raise real issues with Jian in the room. The sky was definitely not blue.
A month later the six of us sat in a boardroom and presented our document to our boss and a middle manager. Fearful of how it would be received, we presented each section in pairs. We spoke of an “unsustainable” workplace driven by a “culture of fear,” and how we were often held hostage to the whims of the host. “If we don’t do what he says, we’ll be punished in some way,” we said. We asked that leadership hold Jian to account rather than operating out of fear of “stirring the beast.”
Apparently Jian was spoken to, and a new part-time digital producer was hired to help us with the website. Oh, and we also got a pizza party. But nothing actually changed. It was clear that our bosses were unwilling to rein Jian in.
I didn’t have the energy to keep fighting, nor did I feel I had many options. So I grew complacent. All I could do was try to minimize my exposure—to keep my relationship with Jian strictly professional, limiting our interactions and avoiding him in social situations. I would tune out his craziness and focus on my queer agenda. After all, I still loved the work itself. It was stimulating and intellectually fulfilling, and I felt it was important. Plus I loved my fellow producers. Ironically, I felt I could be myself at work. I was appreciated and loved just for being me: a quirky, irreverent boy-lady. As a queer person, it wasn’t lost on me what a privilege it was to be so out in the workplace. I reminded myself that I had one of the most coveted jobs in arts journalism. Heck, I’d met everyone from the Indigo Girls to Oscar the Grouch. And on the rare occasion that Jian complimented my work and dedication, I felt amazing. Things could feel good for stretches at a time. But invariably, another land mine would be waiting down the road.
* * *
—
A FEW DAYS after our Red Sky presentation, Mom finally agreed to get a new MRI. I think she was hoping for validation that her methods were working. And so, two years after her diagnosis, Mom and I drove to North York General Hospital, this time to see Dr. Stotland, yet another of the city’s finest colorectal surgeons (were we starting to run out?). It was the moment of truth. I was afraid of what we might find out, but I also felt reassured that if bad had indeed gone to worse, Mom would finally see the light and get on with surgery. I was really hoping the third time would be the charm.
That hope quickly evaporated. Dr. Stotland told us that he and his panel of doctors believed Mom now had Stage 2 cancer. He said it would be a waste of time to remove the tumour with the more minor surgery previously on offer, because it had grown into the muscle. He could do the more extensive surgery, he explained, citing a seventy to ninety percent cure rate if the lymph nodes weren’t infected. And if it was Stage 3, Mom still had a forty to fifty percent chance of being cured.
Mom looked stunned. “But I feel so wonderful!” She’d been feeling so great that she really thought she might be in remission.
I asked Dr. Stotland if there was even a one percent chance that Mom didn’t have cancer. I wanted Mom to hear his answer.
“No, she definitely has cancer,” he said.
Dr. Stotland was direct and detached in typical doctor-like fashion, but there was a gentle kindness to him. He wasn’t putting any pressure on her. He answered all her questions. Like the other doctors, he reassured her that she didn’t have to undergo radiation or chemotherapy if she preferred not to. Mom seemed to be more open to him. I felt hopeful: maybe this time she’d finally come around. She had no more excuses.
As we walked to the parking lot, she once again had a frightened look on her face. The shock of being side-swiped by the truth. I could see the terror in her eyes.
“Mom, you tried doing things your way, and it hasn’t worked.”
“But it has been working! I should be dead by now, but I’m not!”
Mom had a way of spinning everything in her favour. Every time I tried to open a door, she’d shut it in my face.
“My new MRI looks almost the same as the last one. I just need to step up my—”
“It’s not the same! Your cancer is growing. You need to get surgery now.”
All my suppressed anxiety was bubbling up. The geyser was ready to blow.
“I believe there are other things out there. All the millions of things I’ve read say that—”
I stopped in my tracks, threw my hands in the air, and yelled at her: “YOU’RE IN DENIAL!” I’d reached my breaking point. I’d been doing my best to stay calm and supportive for so long, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I collapsed onto a grassy slope next to the parking lot and buried my head in my arms. I give up.
Mom came over and sat down, putting her arm around me. She always came to me when we had a fight; it was one of the clear ways she was the parent in our dynamic. I was comforted by the feeling of her hand on my shoulder, even if I didn’t trust that she was all there.
>
“You won’t change my mind, darling,” Mom began. “You can choose to love me just as I am or not. For both our sakes, I hope you’re able to do that. You matter so much to me.”
Mom mattered to me more than anyone. But to love her just as she was would be to lose her. It was an impossible bind: take a front row seat for her self-imposed execution, or leave altogether.
I lifted my head to look at her. I could see tears in her eyes. “I love you dearly, and I’m sorry you’re suffering,” she said in a slow, pained voice, pausing to take a deep breath. “I am determined to live.”
STAGE 2
8
PERFECT GLOWING HEALTH
“Do you think we can have her committed?” I asked Teddy over the phone, half joking. As much as we wished we could force Mom to get surgery, we knew she was too lucid to ever be declared legally incompetent.
“If your mother dies it will be due to insanity,” Teddy replied, without even an ounce of humour in his delivery.
I’d run out of ideas. Everyone was telling me there wasn’t anything I could do to change her mind—especially Mom. I couldn’t keep banging my head against a wall. It wasn’t conscious, but I guess I slowly started putting my own blinders on. If Mom was going to act as if everything was fine I would do the same, even if I couldn’t help interjecting with my stock rebuttal (“That’s not true!”) every once in a while.
I tried to convince myself that Mom’s cancer wouldn’t catch up with her for another fifteen or twenty years (it’s not as if they kept stats on people with first-stage rectal cancer who just left it to grow). I tried to pretend we’d never discovered her polyp in the first place (if cancer falls in a forest and nobody hears, does it make a sound?). It’s amazing the gymnastics our brains will do to help us cope.
Mom and David had broken up that summer. Mom told me she needed more space to take care of herself. “I’ve read that most spontaneous remissions happen when the patient says, ‘Fuck it, I’m finally going to leave my marriage, or quit my job, or go live in a hut on Salt Spring Island and paint miniature landscapes,’ ” she explained. “I read about one guy whose doctor told him he would die in four months, so he took off travelling,” she continued. “He stayed at a castle in Tuscany, rode the Orient Express, and went on a tour of three-star restaurants in France. Then his cancer disappeared, and he had no more money, so he sued his doctor.” She flashed a self-satisfied smile. “This is my chance to do what I want in life, right now. This is my chance to live more consciously, to be more alive. My body has been out of harmony—physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I want to be vibrant again.”
Mom called herself a “recovering people pleaser.” It was her core belief that she’d always put other people’s needs ahead of her own. Apparently Grandma’s ghost was now corroborating it: “Just like me, you don’t put yourself first, but everyone understands that a cancer patient must do that.” It was true that Mom put a lot of energy into helping other people, but it’s not as if she ignored her own needs. How much more permission did she need to live her Best Life?
* * *
—
OVER THE NEXT YEAR, life carried on as usual. Mom continued teaching at her alternative high school and leading her weekly women’s writing group. She taught a workshop called “It’s Never Too Late: Finding That Special Someone,” based on her book. I kept busy at Q and continued my weekly hockey games, and every weekend my chess partner Joel and I would play for hours at our local café. Josh had his hands full at City Hall, trying to be reasonable at a time of unprecedented dishonesty and reckless behaviour from Rob Ford. Teddy started spending more time with Barbara, a woman he’d met at his Sunday morning film series. And then, in the early days of 2013, the newest member of the Matlow clan was born: Josh and Melissa’s daughter, Molly. Mom had always said she didn’t care if Josh or I had children, but when Molly came along she was over the moon.
It was a happy time, with many family get-togethers centred on baby Molly. We’d meet at the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings and take turns carrying her around in her fleece teddy bear onesie. We rarely talked about Mom having cancer anymore. She believed she had it all under control, and had even stopped updating her affirmation chalkboard. Only one stayed up: I am in perfect glowing health.
But even if we weren’t talking about it, I’d be reminded every time we sat down for a meal and Mom would take out her little amber bottle of Michael’s herbs—the one remedy she consistently maintained. I despised that little amber bottle. That symbol of her denial. That distraction from getting the help she actually needed. She’d squeeze the dropper and hold the tincture in her mouth for thirty seconds while I fought the overwhelming urge to smack the bottle out of her hand. Instead I’d just sit there silently, swallowing my rage.
But my anger did seep out, just in less obvious ways. For example, when Mom and I drove anywhere, she always insisted on parking the car several blocks away. This made me absolutely nuts. As a driver, I always aimed to park right in front of wherever I was going. I would at least attempt to get the closest spot before circling around. But Mom never even tried. “There won’t be any spots closer,” she’d say. “Besides, I like to build in a walk.”
“Why can’t you at least try?” I’d plead with her. “Please! Fight for the spot!”
On the lengthy walk to our destination, I’d pettily point out every available spot along the way. “Oh, what’s that big empty space over here?” I’d say, over and over again. Mom would just laugh it off. It was only a parking spot to her.
For the most part I was able to dissociate and live my life as if everything was okay. But just as in a game of chess, the brain is never hushed. On the surface it’s a quiet game; all you hear is the ticking of the clock or the faint pushing of a wooden piece on the board. No one hears the battle in your mind, the ceaseless overanalyzing and second-guessing. The struggle may seem silent, but underneath, it can be deafening. So even while I tried my best not to think about Mom’s situation, I always answered her calls. I never left town for too long. And I tried to be more appreciative of our time together, keenly aware that she might not be around for as long as she thought she would. When my anxiety did bubble up, Mom would try to reassure me. “I’m going to be living well into my nineties. You’re going to wish I would die,” she’d say, laughing. I desperately hoped she was right, but I wasn’t holding my breath. As far as I was concerned, she was a dead mom walking.
* * *
—
IN THE SUMMER of 2013, three years after her diagnosis, Mom asked me to go to Spain with her to hike the Camino de Santiago. The 780-kilometre route across the northern countryside had been used for centuries by Catholic pilgrims making their way to the interred bones of Saint James. These days the month-long Camino was more of a non-denominational pilgrimage for people at a crossroads in their life and seeking some sort of transformation. Mom was hoping that by walking the seashell-marked trail, or at least nine days of it, she would receive a miracle.
I felt a bit sheepish about taking a trip with my mom. Several of my friends, particularly within the queer community, had strained relationships with their mothers and couldn’t imagine doing such a thing. But Mom and I had a history of travelling together that dated back to my teenage years: to Upstate New York, to the Gaspé when I was thirteen, to Manhattan for my sixteenth birthday.
In my twenties we upped the ante. When I was twenty-one, Mom spent a year teaching at a Canadian high school in Switzerland. She called me at university one day and announced, “I’ve decided that I’d like to go on an outer journey with my outer child.” Mom was taking me to Paris!
I took a few days off school and flew to meet her. We were giddy from the moment we met up in the lobby of Hôtel Jeanne d’Arc in the Marais. During the five days, we never made it to the Eiffel Tower, Champs-Élysées, or Arc de Triomphe. Instead, Mom led me on a tour of the city’s Lost Generation of wri
ters. We hit up haunts from Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, like Café de Flore, where Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre wrote their books. “She was the better philosopher,” Mom insisted. We walked through the Luxembourg Gardens, a favourite spot of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. “Lesbian relationships are so much more civilized,” she mused.
Mom was a great tour guide. She didn’t speak much French, but she was fluent in fromage. Vieux Comté, Bleu d’Auvergne, Bouton de Culotte. Mom could carry on a whole conversation in cheese shops. It was impressive. Of course, she also knew her way around a patisserie. “That’s a mille feuille,” she told me, pointing to a rectangle of layered pastry sheets. “It means thousand leaves.”
When she suggested we get macarons at Ladurée, at first I protested. “I don’t like macaroons.”
“Mac-ah-ron,” Mom corrected. “They aren’t those kosher-for-Passover turds you’re thinking of.” She was right; I was mesmerized by the bright colourful rows of delicate meringue cookies filled with cream. We bought a large box and sampled a bite from each one.
Mom taught me about Proust’s madeleine as we dipped the little yellow sponge cakes into our tea at Mariage Frères. “He takes a bite, and then all of a sudden all these childhood memories start flooding back,” Mom explained. I wondered what memories a cappuccino yogurt with Smarties might elicit.
Whenever we needed a bathroom break, Mom would lead me into the nearest luxury hotel, sauntering in as if she lived there. “I just love a nice hotel bathroom,” she’d say, a little too loud.
I’d sit patiently in designer clothing boutiques while Mom tried on French fashions and asked me what I thought. And she’d go into menswear shops with me. Mom joked that I was “more like a gay son than a lesbian daughter.” She once said, “We have a particularly special kind of relationship. I think it’s partly because you’re like a gay guy. Gay men seem to have less stress with their mothers than heterosexual daughters.”
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