“Am I slow? I asked Pat. “How did I not get all this before?”
“In the past four months you’ve advanced at lightning speed,” Pat replied, smiling. “It’s as if you’ve made fifteen years of progress overnight.”
I laughed. “That’s what they say about ayahuasca!”
Maybe Josh was right after all about Mom having always been this way. Not just in the sense that she was alternative, but in her extreme need for autonomy and her propensity for magical thinking. It took extreme stakes to reveal how extreme her need for control was.
Josh had his own defences, just as I did. He was aware that Mom had threatened to cut me off, so in turn he accommodated her. Once I realized this, I could fully make peace with him. We began spending more time together, talking on the phone more often, channelling Mom to give each other life advice. He started joining me for lobster at Wah Sing. We even went on a couple of trips together, including a hike up Crane Mountain in the Adirondacks, where Mom and I had gone when I was thirteen.
In the spring of 2018, almost three years after she died, we went on a weekend trip to Zion National Park, in Utah. At the airport in Toronto, waiting in line to check our hiking poles, I told Josh some of the things I’d been working out in therapy. “I never realized just how much Mom flew into fantasy,” I said.
Josh erupted with laughter. “Fantasy is where Mom lived! It was her default position. Once in a while she flew into reality!”
* * *
—
I’M OFTEN AT a loss when people ask me how my mom died. Although the quick answer is “cancer,” it doesn’t exactly feel accurate. After a quick intake of breath and a tightening in my chest, I usually add, “It’s complicated.”
There was the cancerous polyp. There was the nose job, which Pat agreed was pivotal. (“It was the moment the medical system became devalued. When it got lumped in with her parents. The emotions she felt toward her mother and father—feeling devoured, betrayed, the lack of trust, their not looking after her best interests—that all got transferred onto the doctors.”) Then there was, as Pat would put it, Mom’s “overactive defence system that operated way past its best-before date,” along with the other factors that supported her defences: the lack of a straightforward diagnosis in the beginning and the second-wave feminism that supported her self-reliance.
Mom was aware how lucky she was to have been born in her time and place. A white, middle-class, heterosexual woman in North America. She and her friends were part of a generation of women who straddled the feminist movement of the 1970s and 80s. What independence they achieved in their lives wasn’t taken for granted. Mom saw how her mother had to ask her father for money. That was never going to be her. Mom had to fight to become a liberated woman, not only from her overbearing mother, but from a sexist society. She was intent on being the protagonist of her own life—a fully autonomous person in the world. It made sense that, when faced with a threat to her liberty, it would be that much harder for her to relinquish any agency, and that her feminist friends wouldn’t dare challenge her right to make her own decisions.
If I had to distill what killed Mom (using my new therapy lingo), it was her fear of dependency and an inability to tolerate her fear in order to face reality. I think the tragic, simple truth is this: she killed herself. (Not intentionally, but still…)
And yet, despite all my theories, the question is ultimately unanswerable. Like the mystery stones, Mom’s psyche would be a riddle for the ages. I’ll never know for sure what led her to make the choices she did. What I do know is that the doctors gave her hope, and she chose to turn away. Something was so threatening that she needed to believe something else. Pat explained the paradox of trauma: “In order to heal, you need to remember. But in order to survive, you need to forget.” I saw this tension play out in Mom—the way she vacillated between facing reality and denying it.
* * *
—
I WANTED TO share my new revelations with Mom’s friends. I was still in touch with a couple of the women in her writing group, who were very surprised to hear my version of the story. They hadn’t had all the information. And even if they had, they didn’t know what they could’ve done. As Lola confirmed to me, “I knew I couldn’t challenge her and keep our friendship.”
Nearly three years after Mom died, my aunt Barbara was back in town. We’d seen each other a few times since, but we hadn’t really talked about what had happened at the end. I’d sensed her distress when Mom cut her off, and I hadn’t wanted to get drawn into their dynamic. For a long time, I’d remained Team Mom all the way.
But when Barbara and I met for lunch, I decided to bring up my theories. She nodded along fervently.
“It was so crazy what she did,” Barbara blurted out.
“Yes, it was!” Her declaration was validating, but I was confused. I took a deep breath. “Then why, when I called you back then, did you tell me that ‘belief is the most important thing’?”
“I could only see things through her eyes,” Barbara confessed. “I couldn’t question her. I knew she would cut me off. And she did!” She shared with me how hurt she’d been and how she’d been working on forgiveness. She told me how she’d even sought out a friendship with Kim Phúc (a.k.a. “the Napalm Girl”). “I thought she could teach me how to forgive,” she said.
After Barbara, I met with David at a barbecue joint. I smiled at the sight of him entering the restaurant in a T-shirt that read LIFE’S TOO SHORT TO DRINK BAD WINE. As soon as we sat down with our trays bearing ribs and smoked chicken, he got out a familiar-looking amber glass bottle. Michael’s herbs! It was like the Twilight Zone. I watched him put the dropper to his mouth, just as Mom used to do. Those fucking herbs.
Once we’d caught up a bit, I finally asked about his perspective on what had happened. David insisted that he never actually believed Mom’s herbs would cure her, but he also didn’t think it was his place to tell her what to do.
“I felt it was my job to support her,” he said.
But, he admitted, in the end it was too much. “I couldn’t keep doing mental gymnastics to keep up with her. I felt like I was losing myself.”
I was taken aback. Mom had complained of the same thing. I’m sure she’d had legitimate issues with David, but it was ironic how, in her steadfast need not to lose herself, she’d forced others to compromise their own selves.
“Your mother was a force of will,” David declared, still in awe of her. “She willed reality to conform to her narrative.” Then he added, “I still wonder what I could’ve done to make our relationship work.”
I understood his pain. Until recently, I’d suffered a similar plague. I tried to tell him that there was nothing he could have done; Mom was never going to release her grip and surrender. David seemed lost in thought, a distant look in his eyes. “She was a woman like no other,” he said. A smile spread across his face. “She sparkled.”
* * *
—
I LET GO of being upset with everyone for not having done more. They’d had their reasons. No one could have changed Mom’s mind anyway.
In her book, I was surprised to find, of all things, a eulogy Mom had written for herself back in February 1992. The goal of the writing exercise was to “praise yourself for the life you’re living, the life you intend to live.”
Elaine was so extraordinarily filled with life that it’s hard to believe she’s dead. She always had an idea on the go, laughed a lot, loved to be with people, do things, go places, and share what she had with her friends and family. She was fun and generous and caring. She was a good mother who was able to break some of the patterns from her own childhood to really come through for her children.
Elaine was very brave and dared to do what she needed to do in spite of her many fears. She became a role model for her bravery, her sharing, her insistence on a fair life for herself and others, and her vitali
ty. She was creative and enriched others’ lives with her creativity.
She will be missed. Often someone will think, “If only I could talk to Elaine.”
I had to admit, it was pretty bang on. Mom had eulogized her ideal self—the person she wanted to be—into being. She’d pulled it off. She was a force of will. I think that’s partly why she was so surprised when the cancer got her in the end: it might’ve been the only time she failed to make reality comply with her story. But it’s also why so many people went along with her. She was magical. Persuasive. She sparkled. And just as Mom had self-eulogized, she was brave—yet there were significant fears she didn’t face. Her idea of bravery was more of the conquering kind, not the vulnerable kind. In order to protect myself, I too had a romanticized view of who she was. I was naive; I took Mom at face value. But she was indeed human—wonderful, but with her own shit.
Perhaps, like Mom and her mother, our relationship has gotten better since her death. In shedding my idealism about her, I’ve been able to get to know her as she really was, imperfections included. I’m able to appreciate the truly amazing person she was and have compassion for the early suffering she experienced, and at the same time to hold space for my anger and disappointment. “Our love deepens when we face the truth about a person and still stay connected to them,” Pat told me. I think I’m learning to love my mother better.
I have no doubt that I loved her and that she loved me. The last five years with her were difficult, but we had a whole lifetime of great memories, including at the end. We laughed. We were connected. Our bond will never be broken. I’m not motherless; I have a dead mom. There’s a difference.
It’s true what she said: I have everything she gave me (including the stuff I talk to my shrink about). The love and support, the time and attention, the lessons in joie de vivre, the way her eyes lit up every time she saw me—it’s all a part of me.
Let the record show: Mom did not bake muffins like some sort of June Cleaver. But she gave me so much more than muffins. And whatever her flaws, she gave me so much more than her own mother had given her. “Who you are is not okay” was the message she’d received. But the message she always gave me was that I was more than okay. I felt immensely loved and liked by her.
“There was this incredible closeness between you. She couldn’t be with her mother when she was dying. But you wanted to be with your mom,” Pat noted. “She accomplished that.” It was true. As I’ve mentioned, Mom could drive me nuts, but there was pretty much no one in my life I’d rather spend time with.
“And in the end,” Pat continued, “she did the thing that was most difficult for her. She put herself in your hands.” I thought about that. Perhaps it was only in dying that Mom learned to be truly vulnerable. (She really didn’t have a choice.) In facing her demise, she was forced to be brave—internally. I thought back to her Ram Dass book, when she was reading about learning to accept dependence. Mom never fully let go—maybe only truly in her last breath—but she did allow herself to lean on me. And I allowed myself to be more vulnerable with her.
Pat smiled with glistening eyes. “It’s a love story.”
* * *
—
OUR FAMILY STILL gets together regularly—Teddy and his partner Barbara, Josh, Melissa, Little Molly, and me. Our gatherings are admittedly quieter and far less amusing without Mom, but we’re carrying on. Little Molly and I call each other “Monkey,” and she thinks it’s cool that I’m “half boy, half girl.” At age five, Molly reminds me a lot of Mom: smart, funny, feisty. She’s even taken over as the family bandleader. And whenever she sees a Monarch butterfly, she calls out, “Grandma Elaine!”
I’m walking through the world with more ease. I like to think I’m on my way to creating the “good life” Mom envisioned for me. The grief has faded, but sometimes it still really hurts. I’m learning to live with the shrapnel. One of Mom’s Missoni outfits hangs in my closet like a colourful shroud. I still have her number in my phone. I wish I could talk to her about all this. But mostly I just wish we could sit in the sunroom with a glass of wine and chat about nothing in particular.
EPILOGUE
It’s been exactly three years since Mom died. I’m at her memorial bench in the Cedarvale Ravine. It’s a sunny day with a few passing clouds; birds are chirping, joggers are running by, people are walking their dogs. The bench is beside a gravel path, a couple of stone throws from the Hemingway up at the top of the hill. Mom and I used to take a shortcut down to the ravine from the back of her building; we’d surface onto the path right here. It’s where we spread the majority of her ashes.
A small silver plaque on the bench reads, “In memory of the vivacious Elaine Ruth Mitchell (1943–2015). She lived life to the fullest and touched many lives.” The plate has her picture on it, just like she wanted.
If I’m being honest, I wish this monument brought me more comfort. But, like my jar of ashes, it’s mostly a sad reminder of all that’s not here. I’m heartbroken. I’m pissed off. I want my mom, not a dumb bench. I take a deep breath (I’m trying not to be so phobic of my emotions). It’s what Mom told me to do, even if she didn’t always do it herself: “Just sit with it. You just feel the loss and the pain, and it will move. It will move a lot faster than if you try to suppress it or push it away.”
I’ll never be okay with her decision not to get surgery. I still hold her accountable for not holding her fear long enough to do what was best for her, for me, for us. But if I turn down the volume in my head for a damn minute, and just sit with how I feel…I’m missing my mother right now.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this book was way harder than I ever imagined. There’s no way I could’ve done it without a lot of help from a lot of wonderful people.
I’d like to thank my magnificent editor, David Ross, for seeing the potential, for not running away at the sight of my “vomit draft,” and for tirelessly polishing my words until they sparkled. Thanks as well to my eagle-eyed copy editor, Karen Alliston, and to the rest of the team at Penguin Canada: Nicole Winstanley, Beth Cockeram, Claire Pokorchak, and Ann Jansen.
Thanks to my literary agent, Samantha Haywood at Transatlantic Agency, for your terrific guidance and boundless positivity.
I’m especially grateful to my friend Nicola Spunt for encouraging me to write this book in the first place. Your emotional support and genius editing were invaluable.
Special thanks to my fairy god-sister, Kathryn Borel, for helping me make this project a reality, contributing astute notes, and always having my back.
Many thanks to my brilliant bibliophile friends for taking the time to read an earlier draft of the manuscript and offer their excellent editorial suggestions: Rachel Giese, Julia Gruson-Wood, and Karen Levine.
This book couldn’t have happened without the help of my therapist, Pat Durish. Your support and insight were instrumental in helping me figure this shit out. Thank you for shining the light.
I’m grateful to the many people who provided me with support and encouragement along the way: Lola Rasminsky, Arei Bierstock, Barbara Mitchell-Pollock, Linor David, Molly Kraft, David Oved, Irene Grainger, Syd Grainger, Lyndsay Moffat, Elizabeth Lancaster, Joel Graham, Josh Knelman and The Banff Centre, Becky Vogan, Amy Macfarlane, Jane Rabinowicz, Zoe Tennant, Stephanie Markowitz, Talia Schlanger, Zoe Whittall, Thea Lim, Gill Deacon, Sophie Kohn, Samra Habib, Lisa Godfrey, Peter Mitton, Brian Coulton, Sean Foley, and all my friends from Q.
Thanks to my family, Teddy Matlow and Barbara McKay Ward, and Josh, Melissa, and Molly Matlow for your love and support and continued laughter.
Not too long before my mom died, she handed me a little ceramic statuette of a rabbit scribe, a favourite talisman of hers. “Here, this is for you,” she said. “You’re going to write a book one day.”
Last but never least, thank you, Mom—for the material, and for always being my champion in life. You really were am
azing.
Dead Mom Walking Page 28
