Dead Mom Walking

by Rachel Matlow

  To say that I was self-righteous about my decision would be the understatement of the decade. If anyone ever said I was “dropping out of school,” I’d diligently correct them. “I’m not dropping out,” I’d say. “I’m rising out.”

  Mom and Teddy hadn’t been surprised when Josh quit school, but they were a bit baffled when I did. I’d always gotten good grades. But like Josh, I didn’t want to learn that way. I wanted to see the world and have adventures. Teddy was certain I was throwing away my future. Mom was a little anxious (being a teacher, she preferred not to have both her kids quit school), but she understood where I was coming from. She was ultimately very supportive, even seeing me off at the airport. “You have guts,” she told me.

  For the next two and a half years I travelled around the world to hippie hotspots with Syd and some of our other “unschooled” friends. I took silver jewellery–making lessons in Mexico, learned Spanish and taught English in Guatemala, trekked the twenty-day Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, and attended talks by the Dalai Lama at his temple in Dharamsala, India. I was living the teenage dream. I would come home in between my long excursions and stay with Mom just long enough to make the money to go back out again. I worked at a bohemian gift store in Kensington Market that specialized in Ecuadorian sweaters and Circle of Friends pottery.

  Eventually Mom and Teddy were cool with my new lifestyle. Sure, I’d quit school. But it wasn’t like I was doing drugs—I was mainlining brown rice and Spirulina Sunrise bars. My form of teenage rebellion was being a hippie fundamentalist. I was a strict vegetarian. I used only “natural” body products. I refused to take any pharmaceuticals (not even Tylenol). I hung out at the health-food store as if it were the mall. My uniform consisted of second-hand jeans with colourful patches, striped Guatemalan shirts, and hiking books—even in the city. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, the surest sign of my hippie cult status? Dreadlocks. It hurts to admit it, but I had ’em. In my meagre defence, it was the late 90s, when they were “in style” (and before I learned about cultural appropriation). I also theorize that my Manic Panic–dyed dreads were an expression of my dormant queerness—a gateway to the short dykey haircut I subconsciously knew I was moving toward.

  * * *

  —

  ONE OF THE biggest perks to ditching high school was that I didn’t have to deal with normal teenage things, like dating. I could totally avoid it. And I did, even if I couldn’t avoid the subject altogether. The first spring after I quit school, Syd and I found ourselves pitching in at a women-only community near Nelson, B.C. This lesbian idyll was on a mountainside, up an old logging road, entirely off the grid. Even their bathtub was wood-fired.

  One evening a bunch of short-haired wimmin arrived in their trucks, giddy with excitement. One of them had a VHS tape in her hands that she was cradling like some sort of Holy Grail. Our host let us in on the commotion: they were congregating to watch the “Coming Out” episode of Ellen. It was essentially the lesbian moon landing of 1997.

  They all rushed into action. One of them peeled back a macramé tapestry to reveal a hidden TV in the corner of the living room. Another got the generator going. Everyone gathered around for the momentous—if pre-recorded—occasion. For one night only, we would plug back into civilization for the sake of Ellen DeGeneres.

  I watched as Ellen finally got up the courage to say to Laura Dern’s character “I’m gay,” only to accidentally blurt the words into the airport P.A. system. I laughed out loud, but on the inside I was freaking out. It was the first time I remember seriously thinking, I think that’s what I am. I was a vegetarian who played competitive hockey and softball, who in that moment “happened” to find herself in a room full of lesbian separatists. How many more hints did I need?

  * * *

  —

  AFTER MANY MONTHS on the road, bouncing from place to place, the idea of staying put and going to university started to seem appealing—an exciting new adventure in itself. I had some older hippie friends who went to Trent, a lefty liberal arts university just over an hour’s drive from Toronto, and would sometimes visit them there. Their courses in feminist philosophy and alternative media sounded way more interesting than high school.

  Emboldened by my “bible,” I booked a meeting with the dean and presented my case for why my self-education was just as valuable, if not more, than a high school diploma. He listened to my arguments and asked, “What if we said that if you go back to high school and get your English OAC [grade 13], we will then consider your application?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going back,” I said. “It would be compromising my beliefs.”

  I was cocky, stubborn, and defiant. I told him that if he wanted to know whether I could read and write I’d be happy to provide some samples of my work. He agreed, and a couple of months later, in the spring after my nineteenth birthday, I received a letter of acceptance.

  Teddy was more than happy to eat his words. Mom was impressed with how I’d subverted the system, but she was even more in awe of my steadfast—if not insufferable—confidence in myself. “You have a strong centre,” she told me.

  * * *

  —

  IN STEREOTYPICAL SAPPHIC fashion, I met my first girlfriend in my freshman women’s studies class. Anya had short red hair and a wallet chain, and she rode a skateboard. I liked that she was five years older and didn’t seem to give a shit what anyone thought of her. We flirted for several weeks before we finally kissed.

  I was building up the nerve to tell Mom about Anya when I was home one weekend in December. I knew she’d be accepting, but I was still terrified to come out to her. I was only just starting to come to terms with my sexuality. Besides Ellen and k.d. lang, there weren’t many celesbian role models back then. This was pre–L Word; it wasn’t yet cool to be gay. Same-sex marriage hadn’t been legalized. Matthew Shepard had just been beaten to death. As good as I had it, I was still scared. Mom and I talked about a lot of things, but we’d never spoken about my dating life, or lack thereof. Afraid of prying, she never asked me overtly personal questions, and I never offered up what was actually going on inside my head.

  At one point that weekend, we were sitting in her sunroom when I finally blurted out, “I’m dating someone.” Before I could even mention Anya’s name, or her pronoun, Mom replied, “Wonderful! Invite her to Solstice!” She didn’t even flinch. Sometimes Mom was too cool.

  Mom had been planning an intergenerational women’s winter solstice party, which that year happened to fall on a full moon. It would be the first time I’d be introducing my new girlfriend—essentially announcing “Yep, I’m gay!”—to twenty of our closest friends. I didn’t think it would come as a big surprise to anyone, but I still felt nervous and self-conscious. In any case, it soon became clear that I needn’t have worried about being the odd one.

  When our guests arrived, Mom led everyone through a series of activities. First she got us each to light a candle and share our intentions for the next year. Then she got us all to hold hands, walk around in a circle, and chant, over and over, “Freedom comes from not hanging on, you gotta let go, let go-oh-oh!” (She explained that a witch named Sophia had taught her the chant.) Next she got us all to stand in a circle and make a human web by tossing balls of yarn to one another. We ended up tangled in a big stringy mess. Anya couldn’t stop giggling. Mom thought she was high. I imagine Anya thought the same about Mom.

  For the pièce de résistance, Mom ushered us all outside into the back parking lot. “It’s time to howl at the full moon,” she announced. We huddled around in our parkas and stared up at the night sky. “Aaah-woooooh, aah-woooooh!” Mom led the group in a series of loud howls.

  A neighbour soon yelled down: “Shut the fuck up!”

  “It’s just me! Elaine!” Mom reassured him cheerfully.

  Anya and I stood on the sidelines howling with laughter. I could see, from Anya’s point of view, how this party
, and my mom, might seem a little bizarre. I’d always written Mom off as quirky or eccentric—until I came to realize that she was just as queer as me, if not more. Considering the word’s traditional meaning—“strange, peculiar, off-centre”—I’d say Mom managed to outqueer me at what was ostensibly my own coming-out party.

  When I look back on everything now, as someone who’s more comfortable in their genderqueer skin, I remember feeling confident and self-assured about so many things and yet totally strange and unknown to myself. I didn’t quite fit in with either gender or in a world where people just followed the script handed down to them. But Mom’s out-there-ness made it okay for me to be myself and to live life on my own terms, just as she did. I’m immensely grateful to her for that. But in the end, the pendulum may have swung too far—in her approach to me, and more consequentially, to herself.

  3

  QUICKSAND OF HER FEARS

  While Mom had been communing with ancient Incan spirits, Dr. Gryfe had brought her case to the Mount Sinai tumour board, a panel of doctors at the hospital who help one another out with less than straightforward cases. When Mom and I returned to his office in September, he told us that they had all concluded the same thing: the polyp in her rectum was most likely first-stage cancer, but the suspicious lymph node was cause for concern.

  The board’s verdict did nothing to assuage her or bring her around. In fact, Mom only became more defiant. She outright refused to get the lymph node biopsy. “I read that the needle they insert could spread cancer through my body,” she said.

  “If you don’t have surgery, you will die,” Dr. Gryfe countered, his frustration apparent. “Your cancer could spread into your bones. It would be a very painful death.”

  Mom was not budging. “I need more time to think about it.”

  “Do you like to play Russian roulette?” he asked her.

  I could tell that Mom was put off by his authoritarian tone. I was already anticipating the monologue to come: his patriarchal condescension, how he symbolized everything that was wrong with the medical system.

  “I don’t want to be rushed into treatment,” she protested.

  Dr. Gryfe was really exasperated now. “You are the most non-compliant patient I’ve ever had.” He didn’t realize he was adding fuel to the fire; declarations like this only made Mom feel more righteous.

  “There are so many studies that show that patients labelled ‘difficult’ live longer than obedient ones,” she told me as we walked out of the hospital. “I think I’m being overdiagnosed. I don’t want to fall into the clutches of the system.”

  For Mom, “non-compliant” was a compliment. She felt she’d been compliant for too much of her life—as a daughter, as a wife, as a woman in general. She was done with being nice and agreeable. (“Nice is just another word for victim,” she’d say.)

  As we pulled out of the parking lot, Mom turned to look at me. “It’s really good not to be passive,” she said, both hands firmly gripping the wheel. “I’m proud of resisting Dr. Gryfe’s bullying and fear-mongering.”

  * * *

  —

  CANCER WASN’T MOM’S enemy; the “system” was. Instead of acknowledging and treating her cancer head on, she focused her energy on a takedown of Western medicine. She was like a fanatical graduate student who’d just discovered Foucault. She’d been doing her homework and brought her own stats to the table.

  “The cancer medical apparatus is the third-largest killer in North America!”

  “Two out of three cancer patients die within the first five years!”

  And then there was her extremely creative interpretation of Dr. Gryfe’s charge: “Even Russian roulette would give me five chances out of six to live. Better than his stats!”

  Mom’s fears were getting the better of her. She was amping herself up. “Who can assure me that if I volunteer to get cut up, and then spend a year getting radiated and poisoned by chemo and likely infected, I’ll live longer?”

  Again, I tried to reassure her with the doctor’s info: “It’s only six weeks of recovery and three to four months of healing. Chemo isn’t even on the table right now. And anyway, he explicitly said that he wouldn’t force you to do chemo or radiation if you don’t want it. If you do the surgery he’s recommending, odds are you’ll live for a long time.”

  I knew the lack of a definitive diagnosis was making Mom even more anxious. The doctors thought it was most likely Stage 1, but they couldn’t say for certain. There was that suspicious lymph node, which probably meant nothing, but could also mean something. They certainly believed she had good chances of survival, but they couldn’t assure her of anything. The doctors didn’t have an airtight story, so Mom began filling in the gaps with her own.

  “Is it Stage 1? Is it Stage 4? What do they even know?” Mom questioned, waving her hands around in the air like an orchestra conductor. “All my tests are clear except for a smudge and a dot on an MRI. They’re often not read properly. My blood count isn’t that far from normal. Maybe I don’t even have cancer!”

  I was annoyed, but I also felt bad for her. Mom told me she was still waking up in the middle of the night, trembling with fear. I wanted to help her get through the dread and angst. After all, in our dynamic, I was the cool-headed one. I knew she was prone to getting frazzled in stressful situations. Despite all her yoga and meditation, she still struggled with anxiety.

  I remembered an incident from a few years back when I was staying with her. I’d gotten up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, and on my way to the kitchen I found Mom in a state of panic, wearing rain boots and holding a garden spade.

  “What’s going on?” I inquired in my sleepy haze.

  She let out a nervous laugh. “I’m burying my anxiety!”

  “Oh yeah? How does that work?” I asked in my best trying-not-to-be-judgmental tone.

  “I wrote down all my anxieties on a piece of paper,” she explained. “Now I’m going to say goodbye to them forever!”

  “All right, carry on,” I said and headed back to bed.

  The next day I’d forgotten about our late-night run-in until I noticed a fresh grave next to the Buddha in the garden.

  * * *

  —

  EMBOLDENED BY HER new cause, Mom began assembling her own Ocean’s Eleven militia of alternative healers. There was Michael, the “master herbalist” and Mom’s right-hand man; Michael’s girlfriend, Monika, who practised “plant spirit medicine” (and also did organic facials); and Pam, the reflexologist who’d somehow also become her therapist. Mom rounded out her roster with a cell energy doctor, homeopath, shaman, Chinese doctor, naturopath, reiki master, and acupuncturist. Mom was the ringleader. With their help, she’d pull a fast one on cancer.

  That fall Mom began every meal by taking an herbal tincture that Michael had concocted for her: a special blend of plantain, lemon balm, New England aster, peppermint, marsh mallow, purple loosestrife, white pine, and cayenne. “They boost my immune system, target the cancer, and help calm me down,” she said, as though she were auditioning for a late-night infomercial.

  Mom bought a juicer and installed an alkaline water system (she’d read that cancer thrives in an acidic environment). She began eating more organic fruits and vegetables along with quinoa and brown rice, and stopped eating refined sugar. She even gave up her favourite French pastries. But she still allowed herself to drink three glasses of organic Pinot Noir per week. “Pinots have more resveratrol, a great anti-cancer substance, than any other grape,” she explained. Every day she meditated and bounced on her mini trampoline (supposedly good for cleansing the lymphatic system). She also mentioned something about five angels who came to stay as house guests.

  Although my own anxiety was mounting, I kept rationalizing that Mom just needed a little more time to come around. I would try to be patient and supportive. I didn’t want to add to the pressure sh
e was feeling from the doctors. I brought her a bunch of raw food and sent her articles about holistic cancer healing. I wasn’t under any illusion that what she was doing could cure cancer, but I also didn’t think it was all nonsense. I thought it was great she was eating healthier. I thought the meditation might help with her stress. I understood that doing things herself made her feel better.

  And Mom’s new regimen was making her feel more positive. She said she had no symptoms, good energy, and felt calmer being off sugar. “I feel wonderful,” she told me, taking a pause before admitting, “well, most of the time. When I think of my life being hijacked by surgery, radiation, and chemo, I feel depressed, hopeless, and miserable. But when I think of doing things my way, I feel hopeful, even oddly happy.”

  * * *

  —

  I WAS CONCERNED about Mom, but my job still consumed most of my energy. Besides taking some mornings and afternoons off to go with her to appointments, I didn’t have that much time to worry. Working on Q kept me in a relentless cycle: pitching stories, writing scripts, booking and pre-interviewing guests, editing tape. Jian had incredibly high standards, and he demanded nothing short of full loyalty and dedication from his producers. It was more than a nine to five job; I often attended events and read books for work in the evenings. Jian might call at any time. We were expected to sacrifice for the greater good of the show. (Or rather, because we loved what we did, we were told it was our “privilege.”) There was hardly ever a moment to catch your breath. And Jian made it clear—you were only as good as your last story.

  Josh, who was running for office, was preoccupied with the municipal election coming up that October. After returning from the Sufi commune and his subsequent travels around the Middle East, Josh had become an environmental activist. And attending theatre school in Paris in his early twenties—at Mom’s encouragement—had prepared him well for a career in politics. I knew Mom’s situation weighed on him, but this was the biggest moment of his career. And because he wasn’t able to make it to her doctor’s appointments, he was getting all his information from her. As far as he could see, Mom was continuing to live her life as usual. She was supply teaching and working toward her book launch. She even organized a fundraiser for Josh’s campaign. It was weird that Mom hadn’t started treatment yet, but there was no reason for anyone to freak out. She was telling everyone that she was “still collecting information.”