Last Sunday afternoon, I pried the electronics out of my children’s hands so we could attend a Greek festival. Officially, we were going for cultural enlightenment. My covert agenda: a rendezvous with my good friends moussaka and tourlou tourlou (a Greek vegetable stew, like ratatouille. I have no idea why the name is repeated, but it sounds much more fun when you say it twice.) No one checked if we had seen “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” 1 and 2 (we have), they just graciously ushered us in.
Ahead of us in the baklava line was a woman with a walker. Her adult son was her guide - her icebreaker ship in the packed-tight crowd. The woman looked to be about my mother’s age, before she passed away nine months ago. She had my mother’s thick, white-gray hair and her same style of glasses.
Walking slowly behind this woman whom I’ve never met and will never see again, I fought an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch her hair. I turned to my teenage daughter, panic stricken and silently pleaded for help. She was (understandably) mortified and stage whispered, “You can’t do that, Mom!”
I knew - I really knew, in every cell of my body, how illogical it was to reach out to this woman, but I struggled to keep my arm down at my side. The impossibility of crossing the space between us broke off a piece of my soul. I paid for the pastries, walked to the car, drove home, got the mail and walked in the house - with a trail of sadness dripping off my cheeks.
It was as if my mother was just there, on the other side of a glass wall. She had brushed past so close and I had almost seen her, but then she was gone again. My hands yearned for her. I physically felt my mother’s spirit in a way that was wholly real, but not in this world’s reality.
My mother’s glass wall had actually been under construction for much longer than the last nine months. She had struggled with Parkinson’s dementia for six years. Frequently confused, she often perseverated on small concerns.
Over time, I stopped confiding in her - about my frustrations with a toxic workplace or my struggles as a single parent of twins. She had been a world traveller and crazy fast walker, but she slowly became more confined to her own bed and her own mind. She slid away from me and the glass bricks piled up between us, higher and higher.
I mourned what I couldn’t do with her, as my children taught me what I could. One Christmas, she was too weak to make the rolled sugar cookies we’d cut out and baked every year of my life. (Since we are being honest, my mom was never the best cook, but she cherished our holiday traditions.) In a quick pivot, I bought pre-made cookies, frosting and sprinkles, so we could decorate them around the kitchen table together. I missed the cookies and the mother I knew, but that afternoon became my daughter’s favorite memory of her grandmother.
After her massive stroke, my mother was confined further, to a bed in the living room that hospice brought in for us. We had ten more days with her. I brushed her hair and washed it with Aloe Vesta no-rinse shampoo (which works surprisingly well. It’s the bomb.) We read the Bible and Oprah magazines. We looked through photos of our family’s travels and my niece’s high school graduation.
At night, my mom would wake up frightened and disoriented. She’d try to get out of bed, forgetting that the stroke had stolen her left side. In a hoarse whisper, she’d call out, “Help me, Help me.” Those two words left deep burns that sloughed off my skin.
Sleeping on the couch next to her, I woke up dozens of times each night to her cries. Holding her hand, I told her that I loved her and that I was right there. I asked her to please say “Snickerdoodles” instead of “Help me” so I wouldn’t feel so helpless. She didn’t understand, but it made me laugh, which helped a little, like a salve.
I read Mary-Louise Parker’s Dear Mr. You during those ten days. I loved her fierce intelligence and rapid-fire wit in the West Wing and every episode of Weeds. (Except possibly the last one which seemed forced, but endings are often tricky.)
Turns out, she is a writer of immense, heart-wrenching talent. Her book is a series of letters to different men in her life - lovers, a taxi driver, her son and in the end, her dying father. (I didn’t know that when I picked it up.) I read it like a firefighter breathing oxygen. I would take a hit, then head back into the crucible of caring for my mother.
It occurred to me that the fire around my mother might be the same ring of fire women feel when a baby is born. (And let’s be honest - it is NOT “pressure”, People. It’s shred-through-your-flaming-lady-parts excruciating PAIN. I’m an OB - I know these things.)
Maybe we have to pass through that ring of fire both to get into and out of this world. Maybe it’s the fire that seals the glass wall shut. Once a person makes it through, the wall closes forever - opaque and impenetrable.
My mother was known as an extraordinary tour guide. From England to Israel to South Africa, she was enthusiastic, organized and a little exhausting in her quest to show us the world. She is our tour guide still, through the passage out of this life.
I don’t know when I’ll feel my mother’s spirit again - on a random Sunday afternoon, with a whiff of sugar cookies or in a crowded airport. Whenever it is, I hope that my children are with me, for my sake and theirs. And a little Ouzo might be nice - to help the memories go down.