Dead Mom Walking

by Rachel Matlow

  Standing onstage next to Josh, my co-emcee, I opened the ceremonies with my hand on my heart. “Mom is in here,” I said to the crowd. I waited a beat before holding up the pendant dangling over my chest. “It’s true! Her ashes are inside this necklace I got from EverlastingMemories.com.” As long as I was telling jokes—my defence mechanism of choice—there’d be no crying on the job.

  There were songs and dances—both inspiring impromptu audience participation—and many, many speeches. Even the husband of the woman who did Mom’s nails stood up and gave a speech. David said some nice words: “Elaine was a special woman. A force of nature. A woman who could, and did, magically create the person she wanted to be, in the world she wanted to inhabit. Elaine believed in the power of stories. Anecdotes trumped statistics for her, nearly every time.” Did they ever.

  Teddy stood up and gave an off-the-cuff speech about the evolution of their relationship, from their early infatuation to the unorthodox post-divorce close friendship they’d developed. “After sorting out some silliness, Elaine and I became friends. And although we dated others, there was some force between us that tied us together.” He pointed to the audience. “Even while she was horsing around with some of the guys in this room, she was going to the movies with me.”

  By the end of the speech he was visibly choked up. “I love her. I loved her,” he corrected himself. “I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone like Elaine.”

  Josh thanked me in front of everyone for taking such good care of Mom. I brought some levity with tales of our ayahuasca trip and my adventures in buying pot for Mom. “She always said, ‘Well, you can put THAT in your act!’ So, here I am, with an abundance of material, and…an act.” I also read the eulogy I’d written for her before she died, managing to stay composed until the end, when I had to choke back tears. “Life will be less without you. But I’m going to be okay because of you.” I couldn’t break down.

  Soon it was time for me to announce the evening’s special guest. I’d edited together a short audio piece from the recordings I’d done with Mom. “Elaine would be delighted to welcome you to her after-death party,” we heard Mom say over the loud speaker.

  “Everybody who’s in this room has touched my life and meant something to me, so to all of you I say thank you for the pleasure, the good company…” She trailed off as Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” played underneath. She talked about her bench in the Cedarvale Ravine: “I thought everyone who cares about me can come and sit there and talk to me.” The piece ended with her singing, “It’s my party, and I’ll die if I want to.” Everyone laughed and cried all the way through the five-minute piece. You could feel the collective surge of love for her in the room.

  For the final performance of the evening, Lola sat down at the piano and Josh took the microphone. Lyric sheets were passed out. Josh crooned the opening lines to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” Could there have been a more fitting theme song for Mom’s life? Everyone sang along with smiles and teary eyes, a communal celebration of Mom’s determination and defiance. I sang through gritted teeth. Why did she always have to do things Her Way? Let the record show, her decisions affected me. I took the blows!

  At one point, Little Molly ran up to Molly and me. “Where’s Grandma?” she asked. Molly and I looked at each other, our eyebrows turned up and lips turned down. How would we explain to a two-year-old that her grandma was dead? “There she is!” Little Molly announced excitedly, running toward the poster-board photo of Mom at the side of the stage—she’d been playing with it earlier and had misplaced it. Molly and I laughed with relief.

  We invited guests to write in a memory book that I’d one day give to Little Molly, and to take home a photo of Mom from the display. And since Josh and I had inherited a few hundred copies of Silver Fox we had no idea what to do with, we gave them out as party favours. “Read at your own risk,” I warned Mom’s men in the audience.

  At the end of the evening, just when the last of us were walking out to the front steps, a dazzling fireworks display began going off in the distance, as if on cue. We all stopped, tilted our heads back, and watched the colourful bursts of light explode in the night sky. I’d done everything I could to pull off a good party for Mom, and now the Universe appeared to be finishing the job. I finally surrendered my producer duties, and for a few minutes just enjoyed the show.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEXT MORNING I got right back to work. The closing of the Hemingway was only ten days away, and so was my trip to Europe. There was still much to do.

  I thought it would be nice to bring some of Mom’s ashes with me on my trip. She loved hiking and mountains; I could spread a bit of her in the Alps. I stared at my little jar of ashes. Mom had told me I could talk to it if I wanted, but this wasn’t my mom; this was a shitty consolation prize. I shook the jar around like a snow globe. What the? There was another identical mystery stone! And another!

  Okay, that’s too many flies in my soup! I drove right over to Josh’s house and poured the entire bag of Mom’s ashes, little by little, into an extra-large Tupperware container—picking out even more stones as I went. After sifting through its entire contents, my pile of prizes included two tooth caps, two small screws, and a tiny piece of metal from Mom’s elbow surgery (reassuring me that these were indeed her ashes)—along with several more mysterious stones, some cracked in half. In total, there were twelve. It was a literal, if not true, baker’s dozen.

  I called the funeral home again. “Might someone have brought them in last minute to add to someone’s coffin, and by mistake they were added to my mom’s?” I asked.

  “Not possible. No one would have had access—we make sure of that. My wife put your mother in her casket then took her directly to the crematorium.”

  Later, he called me back. He said he’d talked to every person who’d had any contact, and no one had any idea what the stones were or where they came from. He added that Mom had been the only one cremated at the facility that day, with two people cremated the day before and one the day after. I joked about the possibility of him reaching out to those families, imagining what he might say: “We wanted to check in to see how you’re doing. By the way, do you happen to be missing anything?”

  There could be only two possible explanations: the stones were inside her when she died or someone at the crematorium tossed them in there. I felt certain it was the latter, but many of my friends believed it was the former. Everyone had a theory.

  “Do you think she swallowed them?” was the most common question.

  Mom wouldn’t have swallowed rocks! She was afraid of pain. Even if she’d somehow believed they were magical healing stones, the prospect would have caused her way too much anxiety. Besides, I was aware of every belonging brought into the rental condo, not to mention everything she’d ingested in the last seven and a half weeks of her life.

  My friends delicately pointed out that the stones were not unlike something she would’ve owned. True, she might have had some reiki healing crystals at some point, but I’d never seen these particular lucky charms. I’d also sent a photo of them to a few of Mom’s “healers,” including Monika, and none of them recognized the stones either.

  Was Mom having the last laugh? Was she messing with my logical brain from beyond? Was she testing my faith in Newton? Had she manifested the stones via the quantum plane? (“It’s all energy!” she’d say.) Did the symbol represent us, with our hands up in surrender? A truce? It was certainly tempting to read greater meaning into it all.

  And I had to admit that there was something so Elaine about it. In the end, I suppose it’s not about the truth; it’s about what we think is possible. She was so persuasive that she could get you to consider any possibility—even that she was magical. My takeaway? There was nothing mundane about Mom. Even her ashes were extraordinary.

  POST-MORTEM

  21

  THE HAPPY SIDE OF THE
POOL

  After the After-Party, I kept on going. I hosted an open house for Mom’s friends at the Hemingway so that they could look through her remaining possessions and take whatever they wanted. A sort of going-out-of-business sale. Everything must go! I wanted her clothes, books, and art to go to those who loved her.

  The day after the closing of Mom’s apartment, Molly and I took off to hike the Tour du Mont Blanc. Over ten days we traversed roughly 170 kilometres—circling the highest mountain in the Alps and passing through parts of Switzerland, Italy, and France. I literally would not stop. (This time I wore boots with extra ankle support.)

  I was happy on the trail, eating fondue and playing chess with new friends, but almost every night I had nightmares. In them, Mom was refusing treatment and I was freaking out, crying to Teddy over the phone, “Mom is killing herself!” I didn’t need a dream dictionary to crack this code. I’d wake up exhausted and shaking, my chest pinned to my dorm-room bunk bed. I was still having the occasional Jian nightmare too, just to mix up the nighttime programming.

  On our last day, I decided to spread Mom’s ashes. “She took the easy way,” I joked. Molly and I sat down on a rocky slope overlooking the Chamonix Valley, where I pulled the baggie from my backpack. Molly wanted to have some sort of ceremony, maybe say a few words. But I wasn’t feeling it. I just emptied out the ashes into the wind and got up to go for lunch.

  For the most part Molly and I had been getting along well, but I could sense her growing frustration. She wanted to connect more deeply with me, to cry together. I just wanted to relax and eat pasta with truffle sauce.

  Before heading home, we spent a few days in rural Tuscany. I splurged and booked us a room at a boutique country inn, a centuries-old converted farmhouse that looked out over rolling green hills and the medieval towers of San Gimignano in the distance. Molly and I were in the swimming pool, an oasis of calm surrounded by olive trees, when she finally pulled the plug on my avoidance.

  “Why aren’t we talking about your mom?”

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “I just want to be happy.” I splashed around. It was a beautiful day, and truly, all I wanted to do was bask in the hot Tuscan sunshine.

  Molly pouted. “Well, I’m sad!”

  I was annoyed. I thought I should get to take the lead on grieving my own mother’s death. I drew a line in the water between us. “This is the happy side of the pool,” I said, pointing to my side. “If you want to come over here, you have to be happy.”

  * * *

  —

  BY THE TIME we returned from Europe I’d developed lockjaw from clenching my teeth at night. My jaw felt bruised; I could barely eat any solid food. I had to sleep with a mouth guard for my newly diagnosed TMJ.

  Suddenly there was nothing for me to do. I finally stopped—and crashed. Hard.

  I was in the shower when the snaps finally came off my inner compression sack and I broke down. That suffocating sadness came to the surface and I cried harder than I’d ever cried in my whole life. It was guttural and involuntary, and it hurt like hell. “WHAT DID YOU DO?” I cried, flooded with regret over how Mom had so royally fucked up. But more than anything, the thought that I’d never see her again was too much to bear.

  At first I tried to pretend that Mom was just off on one of her silent retreats (and actually following the rules this time). But soon, when I wasn’t wandering around in a fog, I was staying in bed for days at a time. It took all the energy I had to go outside, to even make a phone call.

  Molly would visit me in the evenings, and we’d watch TV. I wasn’t the best company. I mostly lived in my head, obsessively ruminating about everything that had happened, wondering how I was ever going to move forward.

  To comfort myself I’d pick up takeout from Pusateri’s (Mom’s “home-cooking”) and revisit my recordings of her. The sound of her voice soothed me, and her words started to take on new meaning. I now understood what she meant by “There’s no time limits to grieving, or no way it goes.” And I finally opened the lavender envelope she’d given me before she died. The note was short and her handwriting was messy—Mom had put off writing mine till near the very end.

  Dear Rachel,

  I have always loved and respected and admired you. But mostly just loved you. And you’ve been so easy to love.

  I have been so blessed that you want to help me as much as I want to be helped—your competence, great love, and company have been seeing me through what could have been much harder.

  My advice. Take advice. Then be yourself. Your extraordinary self.

  Much love, e/mom

  It was short and sweet, but it was all I needed to hear. For all my worrying about how I’d be able to survive without my biggest support, my adviser, my person, Mom was confident that I’d make it through if I just stayed true to myself.

  * * *

  —

  IN SEPTEMBER, AS per Mom’s advice, I started seeing a therapist. Pat was in her early fifties, a stylish lesbian with a short blond bob and a calm, confident presence. She had a dead mom, too. I liked her immediately. She was compassionate, but not too warm or bubbly, and she appreciated my dark humour. Her office was cozy, decorated with lots of plants and drawings of trees, lakes, bees, and whales. She had a few tasteful therapy posters (no “Hang in There!” kittens), including a print bearing the word “Repetition” over and over—an ode to Gertrude Stein.

  During my first few visits I was disoriented and overwhelmed. WTF just happened? I was still doubting myself and trying to get a grip on reality. What was true? What had the doctors said? Maybe I’ve got it wrong, maybe it’s my fault, I should have done more. People kept telling me there was nothing I could have done to change Mom’s mind. I’d nod along, but secretly I still believed there was. I was experiencing, as they say, complicated grief.

  “That’s really tough what you went through,” Pat said.

  Was it? I wasn’t sure. I knew it was shocking, and that I was deeply affected, but I wasn’t able to open up to how damaging it had been for me. So when it came to talking about grief, and Mom, we never stayed on the topic long.

  Instead, conflict with Molly became my distraction (er, focus)—it took up most of the space in our sessions. Molly and I weren’t communicating well. She felt she didn’t know what was going on in my head, and that I couldn’t talk to her about my feelings.

  But how could she possibly understand? As usual, I was shutting her out. It was easier for me to talk to friends or even strangers—other members of the Dead Parents Club—than it was to cry on her shoulder. We’d barely had a chance to build a foundation in the first place, and now it was slowly crumbling.

  * * *

  —

  IN MID-OCTOBER, I had to go back to work. I took a low dose of SSRIs to help me get out of bed (how far I’d come since my teenage days of pharmaceutical abstinence). It was nice to see my friends at q again, and getting up every morning helped me cultivate a sense of normalcy. I was grateful to be working on the show with Shad as the host, but a part of me was still haunted by his predecessor.

  The following June, almost a year after Mom died, Jian was scheduled to deliver a public apology to one of his complainants, a good friend of mine who used to work at Q. He’d been acquitted of all charges in his first trial involving three other women—a verdict that left many people profoundly angry with the flawed justice system and led to calls for sexual assault case reform. With mounting evidence, including an eyewitness account, it would prove harder for him to get out of this final count of sexual assault.

  I rode up to the courthouse on my scooter at the precise moment his limo pulled up on the other side of the street. I glared into his tinted window and slowly shook my head, though I’ll never know if he saw me. I sat in a pew while he read his apology, struck by the dullness with which he delivered his words. This was a guy who had lifted words off the page an
d made them sing, someone so skilled at inhabiting other voices. Now he was talking in a monotone, with hardly any affect—likely a protest on his part. His voice had been in my head for so many years, but I’d had no idea who he actually was.

  In the fall of that year, I finally left q for good. It was time to move on.

  Molly and I went on a hiking trip to Everest Base Camp, and the following January she left to help the refugees in Greece for a few months—a welcome reprieve from our increasingly tense relationship.

  In the summer after she returned, we finally called it quits. I’d been dealing with my grief and depression for so long that I didn’t have anything left for her. I couldn’t absorb her grief over the sad state of the world, all her big feelings, and Molly was tired of being patient with me. Her anger and irritability had only expanded. She wanted me back—the playful, energetic, sturdy me she’d gotten to know in our first couple of months together. But I wasn’t sure I’d ever be that “me” again.

  22

  NO STONE LEFT UNTURNED

  It had been two and a half years since Mom died, and almost as long since I’d been seeing Pat in therapy. Over that time we’d spoken of many things, usually whatever was coming up for me in the day to day. But through it all Pat would find ways to circle back to Mom, and as the months passed she was able to keep me on the subject for longer stretches, to question me further on how I was coping—or not—with her loss.