Dead Mom Walking

by Rachel Matlow

  For the most part, Mom adored her parents. They were responsible, kind, and generous. And they were nothing but incredibly loving grandparents. But as I got older, Mom filled me in on some of her lingering issues with them: Benny had been emotionally distant, and Frimmy had looked to Mom to mother her. She explained how she was named after both her parents’ mothers (Eta and Ruchel became Elaine Ruth), whom they each cherished but never got enough from.

  Mom told me that, growing up, she never felt cared for as a separate person. One of her earliest memories was dropping her mother’s hand to explore a park when she was three, and her mother freaking out. “She’d been abandoned by the early death of her mother,” Mom explained. “She continually let me know that I was a selfish ‘cold potato’ if I didn’t attend to her needs.”

  Mom had always been a voracious reader, a fine means of escape from her voracious mother. Her nose perpetually in a book, even at the dinner table, she was the only kid given an adult membership to her local public library because she’d read all the books in the children’s section. “When I wasn’t reading I was writing novels, all imitations of Anne of Green Gables, all starring smart feisty orphan girls,” Mom told me with a laugh.

  She’d kept a journal since the age of nine, and she let me read her childhood diaries. Even back then she was working on personal development. She’d keep track of her positive and negative character traits (“courageous” and “lazy”) and cut and paste articles from the newspaper, like one titled “Ten Teenager T’s: Recipe for Personal Growth.” She underlined “Be True To Self.”

  Mom claimed that before she got co-opted into being “nice,” she wasn’t afraid of anything. She climbed tall trees and scaled a seventy-foot bridge with her lunch bag in her teeth. When she was eleven she wrote a novel called Prim and Unproper. Mom identified with Jo March from Little Women; she, too, wanted to decide her own fate. Her mother had been a gifted dancer but was told by her older sister that she couldn’t join a chorus line because “nice Jewish girls don’t do that.” Mom would watch her mother ask her father for spending money, like a child asking for allowance, and think to herself that she’d never be dependent on a man.

  At age twelve, Mom wrote a letter in her Nancy Drew diary to her future self.

  Dear twenty-two,

  Have you had a book published? Have you graduated from ‘u’? Have you gone on a trip to Europe? Do you still climb, run, and get into mischief? Are you pretty? Are you happy, joyous, thrilled? Do you still steal in those wonderful minutes before you sleep for daydreams? I can hardly wait to be you, 22.

  Your foolish,

  Old self

  P.S. Have you met Teddy?

  I’d seen it with my own eyes: Mom’s prophesy written in her twelve-year-old cursive. It was as though she had the magical power to manifest her own future husband.

  Mom often fantasized about a “tall, dark, handsome hero” she called King Teddy (I believe she was inspired by Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Emily trilogy, which featured a boy with that name). In her stories she mostly loved him but sometimes bitterly hated him. On occasion she’d replace him with a new version of Teddy. Her fantasies always ended with a kiss.

  Mom said that self-esteem came slow and late to her life. She was confident until adolescence, and then she lost herself. “In high school I was a nerd who edited the yearbook and watched only depressing foreign films. I protected my weak inner self with intellectual pretensions.” Friends remembered her as being beautiful and confident, but she recalls feeling so insecure. “I had no centre,” she told me. It didn’t help that her parents made her go to a different high school from her best friends because they wanted her to make friends with Jewish kids. Her parents weren’t religious, but considering the times, I suppose they had an anxious sense of tribalism based on legitimate fear.

  As a teenager, Mom called herself an anarchist, wore a peace button, and donned a red wool poncho she’d bought at the Village Weaver shop downtown. She told me how her father had remarked, “No nice Jewish boy will ever marry you if you wear that.” But Mom had other priorities. Sure, she wanted to fall in love, but above all she wanted to have adventures. She vowed not to marry until at least twenty-five, believing that all adventures ended once you became a wife.

  And adventures she did have. The first time she lived abroad it was to get away from her overprotective parents. After studying English and Russian literature at the University of Toronto, she sailed to London in 1966 to teach for a year. She’d always felt confident when it came to teaching. Her next departure, to Israel two years later, was to flee the looming inevitability of marriage. When she returned in her late twenties, she felt more grown up and was ready to settle down.

  And that’s when she actually met Teddy. A friend had set her up on a blind date with my dad, then a successful Jewish lawyer and activist. They fell in love, were engaged within a year, and after taking turns having cold feet, took the plunge in the summer of 1972. Mom said she was high on Valium and that Teddy was smashed on Harvey Wallbangers. I suppose they needed a little help getting down the aisle.

  In one early diary entry Mom acknowledged how much her fantasy life meant to her as a child. At thirteen she wrote, “Mommy seems to think that my imagining sprees are silly and a waste of time. I most positively don’t. It makes life so much more interesting and richer. And besides, I look forward to building castles in the air, so I go to bed at a reasonable time. Mommy should be glad of that.” Seeing her at her book launch, I couldn’t help thinking just how far those sprees had taken her. Fantasy wasn’t only a means of escape from her overbearing mother; it was also a way of manifesting the reality she wanted. Journaling had turned her into the confident, self-possessed woman she was today. She had written herself into a Silver Fox.

  * * *

  —

  BY EARLY DECEMBER Mom was still open to the smaller surgery, but she wasn’t prepared to proceed until she had clear evidence that it was cancer. That may have been another stalling tactic, but Teddy called her bluff and arranged for his beloved gastroenterologist to perform a biopsy. He’d gone to Dr. Habal for several colonoscopies over the years. Unlike Mom, Teddy loved doctors—they made him feel safe and secure. He was always getting some part of his body scoped out.

  Mom agreed to the minor procedure, and Dr. Habal was able to successfully remove a sample of her tumour. Teddy held her hand tightly as they awaited the results.

  “Half the polyp has cancer cells,” Dr. Habal informed her.

  “Only fifty percent?” Mom replied.

  “What does it matter? Fifty percent, twenty percent, ten percent…You need to get surgery to remove it,” said Dr. Habal.

  “But my blood count went down from 10 to 6.7,” she said. “Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  “I’m sorry, but it actually doesn’t. You could have a 2 and still have cancer.”

  Teddy and I weren’t at all surprised by the results—if anything we were somewhat relieved. Mom could no longer question whether she really had cancer. There was irrefutable proof. Surely she’d quit stalling now.

  A few days later I got a call from Teddy. “Your mother is as stubborn as a mule!” He said Mom told him she wasn’t going to do surgery. Instead she wanted to continue with her own methods of healing indefinitely.

  Oh, hell no. I went over to Mom’s place to talk to her in person.

  It was December, and her radiators were already on at full blast. Mom always liked to be cozy and toasty warm. We used to joke that she kept her place so overheated that the room-temperature water was boiling. We sat down in the sunroom.

  “It’s true. I have come to a decision,” she said, sitting upright on her white armchair. “I’m not doing surgery or anything the doctors are offering me.”

  I stared at her in disbelief.

  “I’ve had several months to read, talk to people, and think,” she said slowly
, as though presenting the closing arguments of a hard-fought court case. “I know I’m taking a risk in going off-road. But there’s statistical evidence that I’ll die if I go the conventional route.”

  “There’s statistical evidence that you’ll die if you don’t get surgery,” I shot back.

  “I believe I have a better chance of a cure, and a better quality of life, if I do things my way than I would with the pseudo-certain offerings of Western medicine.”

  I looked at the white satin pillow she kept on the opposite couch. It had a silkscreen image of a woman riding a motorcycle and the words NOTHING COULD STOP HER. SHE WAS PASSIONATE. AND MADLY IN LOVE.

  “I’m requesting that you all respect and support my decision,” Mom said firmly.

  It was one thing for her to stall, but now she was outright refusing treatment. Would she really continue to waste time experimenting with herbs, all the while letting her cancer grow?

  “How do you think you’ll cure yourself of cancer without surgery?” I asked.

  “By building up my immune system and outsmarting it. I’ve read hundreds of personal stories by people who are alive twenty years after they were told to go home and die. People say it’s a miracle when it happens. ‘Wow, we can’t find any!’ This happens over and over again.”

  Facts were never Mom’s strong suit. Part of what made her such a great storyteller was that she took a few liberties with the truth. She never made stuff up, at least not intentionally, but she’d embellish details for dramatic effect. “Josh liberated the bunny from the cage at preschool when he was only three,” she’d say (when really he was five), or “Teddy was smashed on fourteen Harvey Wallbangers” (the number was never consistent). Although sometimes I had to wonder where her line between exaggeration and fantasy lay. She had this one story about how she would regularly bake us muffins when we were little. “They were chock full of healthy stuff, and then I’d throw in a ton of chocolate chips or blueberries,” Mom would recall. “They were delicious!” But no one else had any memory of this. I remember her talking about these healthy muffins she wanted to make (and to be fair, I think she did make a batch or two when I was a teenager). Our lack of recall annoyed her deeply. From Mom’s perspective, we had all ungratefully forgotten what an accomplished baker she was. “The muffins” became a loaded symbol of how our family memories differed. But this was no longer a matter of muffins. Mom’s alternative facts now had dangerous consequences.

  “But is there any evidence?” I challenged. I wasn’t interested in Mom outsmarting her cancer with asparagus.

  “Yeah! People have gotten better!”

  “You think your cancer will just spontaneously disappear?”

  “I don’t think I’ll have a spontaneous remission. Mine will be a long, hard-fought remission that I’ll win for myself.”

  “Why can’t you let the doctors help you?”

  “I’m confident that I can pick and choose what’s best for me.” She huffed. “I’ve had enough of being held hostage by these doctors.”

  “The only thing you’re being held hostage by is your beliefs!” I huffed back. My forehead was sweating. I wasn’t sure if it was from my anger boiling over or the radiators being on full blast. “Why are you doing this?” I asked, my voice straining.

  Mom paused before speaking. “I have to stay true to who I am.”

  Huh? I had hippie friends who were big believers in natural and holistic medicine and even they wouldn’t reject conventional treatment if it were absolutely necessary.

  Mom spoke again in a level tone, sad and serene. “I know I’ll get well as long as I don’t abandon myself.”

  “Please! Think about—”

  “I’ve made my decision,” she said, her demeanour quickly toughening up. “And I don’t want to discuss it with you.”

  5

  THE HABITAT OF POLLUTION

  I could see how this was going to play out. Chess is all about visualization and anticipation. Faced with an attack, you must evaluate the threat, sift through your available options, and find the best possible move to defend yourself. It all comes down to the decisions you make based on the number of moves you can see ahead. And if you forecast well, not only can you see the future, you can control it.

  But it was as if Mom were looking at a completely different board—as if the doctors were telling her there wasn’t much they could do to help her, as if she were bravely taking a chance to live the life she wanted instead of submitting to a hellish endgame. I totally would’ve accepted her choice to forgo medical intervention if she had late-stage cancer. I understand why people with a terminal diagnosis would choose to enjoy whatever time they have left rather than endure harsh treatments that may or may not extend their life. But that wasn’t at all Mom’s situation.

  It’s not like I even fundamentally disagreed with everything she was saying. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day it were proven scientific knowledge that our own immune systems were the key to curing cancer. But the clock was ticking. Mom didn’t have all the time in the world to experiment with herbs and health food. This wasn’t Lorenzo’s Oil.

  Every time we got together I’d challenge her. “What about doing both?” I proposed over zucchini-noodle pad thai at Rawlicious in Yorkville. “Your way and surgery?” Mom and I were now meeting up at raw food restaurants instead of our usual French bistros.

  “I’m not getting surgery,” Mom said, opening her little suede pouch that held Michael’s herbal tincture. “Outsmarting cancer is much better than hammering away at it with brutal, barbaric protocols,” she insisted, bringing the glass dropper to her mouth.

  “But is there any evidence that alternative treatments can cure rectal cancer specifically?”

  Mom raised her finger as she held the tincture in her mouth. My frustration flared as I waited.

  “It doesn’t matter what kind of cancer it is. You treat the whole body,” she explained after swallowing. “If you don’t change the terrain, it can come back. My body, spirit, and mind were a host for cancer. Surgery would only remove the visible evidence of a diseased terrain. It’s better for me to clear the habitat of pollution.”

  Mom was hardly touching her nut loaf wrapped in a collard leaf. I could tell that the foodie in her wasn’t so pleased with her new pollution-clearing diet.

  I challenged her further. “The doctor acknowledged that it’s possible for certain brain cancer lymphoma to shrink, but he’s certain that a rectal mass cannot regress.”

  “It doesn’t have to regress the way I do things. It’s not about it regressing.” Just when I’d think I had her cornered, she’d slither out of my grasp.

  “Then how does it go away?” I asked, barely containing my incredulity.

  “It melts, kind of. It becomes regular cells, or it dies. It doesn’t have to go backward, it can just get picked up by healthy cells. It just has to be cleaned up. Vacuumed or whatever.”

  Vacuumed or whatever?! I stabbed my chopsticks into my “noodles” and shot her a stern look.

  “I’m not thinking I’m going to convince you,” Mom said in a singsong tone. “You just have to hang out with uncertainty, as I do, if you want to continue hanging out with me.”

  What did she mean, IF I want to keep hanging out with her?

  * * *

  —

  AT WORK I was busy navigating another person’s warped perspective. Jian had his own version of reality, and he expected everyone on the team to go along with it. He’d stick to our scripts almost verbatim—more than any other CBC host did—and yet he’d take public credit for introductions and questions he hadn’t written. In the Q&As that followed our live audience shows, when fans would ask him how the show was made he’d say that producers merely helped him out with “research packs.” (We secretly dubbed those sessions “Q&Ls”: Questions and Lies.) He’d talk about how he was especially proud of “his”
trademark opening monologues, except he didn’t write those either (his contribution amounted to adding a cheesy rhyme at the end). He’d say on air that interviews and performances were “live in Studio Q” when often they’d been edited and pre-recorded days earlier. It was important to him that listeners thought the show was always live; he’d even pretend to say goodbye to guests who’d left the studio days earlier just to keep up the ruse, and would get angry if anyone tweeted about a guest or segment that wasn’t in step with his manufactured timeline.

  We had to play house, too. If a journalist was following him for a profile, he’d suddenly show up at our story meeting and act as though he regularly contributed ideas (when in actuality he’d go off to the gym while we were crafting the stories he’d later take credit for).

  Jian would occasionally explode and berate us, but most of the time he worked in more covert ways to distort our reality and impose his own, wielding his cruelty in subtle, passive-aggressive ways that kept our minds constantly spinning. If he was upset with you because an interview didn’t go well, he might give you the silent treatment for days or skip over your nickname in the show’s credits (his way of signalling that you were in his bad books). He’d hold producers hostage at our desks for hours as we’d wait around at the end of the day until he was ready for our script consultations. If I dared to tell him I had to get going after working a full day, he’d question my dedication: “Other producers don’t need to leave early.”

  He’d keep our guests waiting, too—a Bobby Fischer–like power play to get the upper hand (he’d make them sweat for a while before sauntering in like a movie star). When we had Gloria Steinem on the show, I had to keep her occupied for about twenty minutes while we waited for him to arrive. Although I was thrilled to be hanging out with one of my sheroes, I spent the whole conversation worrying that Jian wouldn’t show up. After the interview, Jian asked me how I thought it went.