K M Walker

The Glass Wall

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: rendezvous with good friends moussaka and tourlou tourlou (a Greek vegetable stew, like ratatouille. I have no idea why the name is repeated, but it sounds more fun when you say it twice.) No one even checked if we had seen “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” 1 and 2 - they just graciously ushered us in.

Ahead of us in the baklava line was a woman with a walker. Her adult son was guiding her - her icebreaker ship in the packed-tight crowd. The woman looked to be about my mother’s age, before she passed away six 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, pleading for help. She was (understandably) horrified and stage whispered, “You can’t do that, Mom!”

I knew - I really knew, in every cell of my body, that I couldn't reach out, but I physically struggled to keep my arm down at my side. The impossibility of crossing the space between the two of 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 empty hands ached. My body felt my mother’s spirit in a way that was wholly real, but not exactly reality.

In truth, my mother’s glass wall had been under construction for more than the last six 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. As she slid away from me, 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 here, my mom was never the best cook, but she cherished our holiday traditions.) In a quick pivot, I bought pre-made plain sugar cookies, frosting and sprinkles, so we could decorate them around the kitchen table. 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, looked through photos of family travels and my niece’s high school graduation.

At night, my mom would wake up disoriented and frightened. She kept forgetting that the stroke had stolen her left side, so she'd try to get out of bed. In a hoarse voice, she'd cry out, “Help me, Help me." Those two words left full thickness burns, that sloughed off my skin.

I slept next to her on the couch, waking 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 call out “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 bought it because I loved her fierce intelligence and rapid-fire wit in the West Wing and every episode of Weeds (except the last one which seemed forced, but endings are often tricky). Turns out, she is a writer of immense, heart-wrenching talent. She writes 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 up the book.) I read it like a fire fighter breathing oxygen - I would take a hit, then go back into the crucible of caring for my mother. 

During those ten days it occurred to me that the fire around my mother was the same ring of fire women feel as a baby is being born. (And let’s be honest, People - it is NOT pressure when a baby comes through the birth canal. It’s shred-through-your-flaming-lady-parts excruciating PAIN. I’m an OB - I know these things.)

Apparently, we have to pass through fire both to get into and out of this world. Maybe the fire seals the glass wall shut. Once you make it through, the opening closes forever, opaque and impenetrable.

My mother was known for being an uber-amazing tour guide. When we lived in England and Israel and South Africa, she swept our family and visitors along on incredible journeys. She was enthusiastic, organized and a little exhausting in her quest to show us the world. She is still our tour guide, through this passage out of this life.

I don’t know when I will feel my mother’s spirit again. Whenever it is - on a random Sunday afternoon, in a crowded airport, with a whiff of sugar cookies - I hope my children are with me, for my sake and theirs. And a little Ouzo might be nice.