How Julie Andrews and a Childhood Friend Connected me to my Ailing Mom

My mom’s not well. I wrote at length here in 2022 about her subtle and then steep decline. Since then there have been periods of status quo with an intervening acute issue every few months that involves an emergency room visit, a battery of tests, a multi-week stint in a physical rehabilitation facility, and settling into a more compromised ‘normal’. 

I visited my mom on Cape Cod in June as her most recent and unexpected rehab visit, prompted by COVID, drew to a close. Exhausted and disoriented, my mom recognized me but couldn’t process why I’d come from California (my home of 23 years). She thought she’d gone to a show and shopping with a long-time friend earlier that day and, when asked, found it impossible to determine if taking a nap or playing Uno most fit her mood. A blank stare left us to decide for her.

A lot of sadness surfaces when I’m with my mom these days. Sadness that cutting food is too tricky for her decaying fine motor skills and that maneuvering, with assistance, from a bed to a wheelchair leaves her breathless and depletes her like a workout with Alex Toussaint. 

But beyond her declining mind and body, there’s a deeper grief: we can’t connect. I, like the rest of humanity, crave connection.  As Brene has drilled into us: “Connection is why we're here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives…it’s the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued.”

Just like my mother’s 78 year old body, that energy between us is ailing.

I know how to access connection through the tried and true methods: conversation and shared experiences.

A recent getaway with high school friends to Napa had us dissecting perimenopause implications on sleep and our Enneagram types; a margarita with a friend on a Thursday night had us bonding over the untenable pace of work and the identity shift of ‘mother of toddlers’ to ‘mother of teens.’ My family’s spring break excursion to Moab, where we checked off two national parks in two days, lost our way in nature’s labyrinth, the fiery furnace, and listened to Beyonce’s Texas Hold ‘Em on repeat during the drive to Salt Lake City had us adding memories to a deposit box only we have the key to. These interactions deepen my connection to humans I love; they reinforce the purpose and meaning in my life.

I’m clumsy and clunky in clawing for connection with my mom these days.

But, in that rehab facility, in all its sterility and with its countless, rigid rules, unexpected moments of connection showed up like an overdue letter from my nine year old at sleepaway camp. 

It happened when I put an airpod in each of our ears and played songs from our favorite musicals. 

Musicals permeated my household growing up; we went to London’s West End to see them live and watched them on repeat at home. I envied my mom’s ability to say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious backwards, loved that she introduced me to Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (misogyny aside), and cried with her when Maria sang Somewhere, through rage and desperation, as Tony took his last breath. 

As I played I Feel Pretty sitting with my mom in 2024, her expression went from distant to delight. I mouthed the lyrics, inviting her to participate, and she somehow found language from the recesses of her brain. She sang aloud softly and, contained in a wheelchair with an alarm-activated seatbelt, nodded her head, lifted her chin, and smiled as she sang the chorus and held the final note of ‘Such a pretty meeee!’ 

We covered South Pacific and Les Mis and as I held my mom’s hand and stayed locked with her eyes, I played My Favorite Things and let a whole stream of tears flow down my cheeks when we sang in unison:

“When the dog bites, when the bee stings,

When I'm feeling sad...

I simply remember my favorite things

and then I don't feel so bad.”

My mom didn’t cry. She didn’t ask why I was crying or show visible concern with a furrowed brow, tilted head, or narrowed eyes. She couldn’t name the musical. But the words we sang together channeled her. Her whole life she’s never wallowed in a pity party - there’s a ‘get on with it’ spirit she inhabits. In those moments as we sang, I mourned the graduations of my kids she’ll never attend, the parts of her story I’ll never know, and the transformation of who she was to who she is. And, I wept as I listened to her in the lyrics as she told me, ‘Chantal, remember our favorite things.’

An unexpected moment of connection showed up again when Rebecca walked in. 

I met Rebecca at three years old at Community Nursery School in Lexington, MA. Rebecca and I went to different elementary schools but still reliably sold Country Time lemonade outside my house on Hancock Street and did jazz dance with Debbie on Saturdays. After second grade I moved to England and we kept in touch sending garbage pail kids back and forth and catching up over coveted long-distance calls. At 10 years old, Rebecca came to London for a month in the early summer while her mom had abdominal surgery. My mom accommodated her lactose intolerance, relished in her charisma, took us to the wave pool and park to play, and tucked us both in at night. When I was 13 my mom took me out of school and on a transatlantic flight so we could celebrate Rebecca’s Bat Mitzvah. And at 16, when Rebecca came to London for spring break, my mom turned a blind eye when we pub hopped; she focused her energy on securing tickets to the Tower of London and Cats instead. 

This past June, Rebecca drove two hours during rush hour on a Monday night to see me and visit my mom. By the time she pulled into the rehab facility at 7pm my mom’s already depleted energy had waned entirely; she lay in bed, mouth ajar, unable to keep her eyes open. I warned Rebecca of my mom’s sleepy state, recommending a quick hug and speedy departure. But as we walked into the room my mom lifted her head and, like a scene from the 1990’s movie Awakenings, spoke in her first complete sentence of the day with, ‘Oh I was hoping you’d come visit, Rebecca.’ As Rebecca knelt down and, over hospital bed barriers, embraced my mom, my mom insisted, ‘When I get out of here, we must have you over for dinner.’

Rebecca’s friendship remains one of the greatest gifts of my life and exists because my mom enabled and encouraged it over decades. She’s always loved Rebecca and our unlikely, enduring friendship. Witnessing my mom remember her, delight in her, awaken because of her, connected me to my mom. ‘She knows how treasured this person and our history is,’ I realized with both disbelief and wonder.

Sometimes connection comes easily: when a partner hears what we mean more than what we say, when decisions with a friend about how we spend time together are effortless, when our desire for depth or levity is perfectly matched on a phone call with a sibling. Sometimes it’s hard. We sense it when we have to prepare topics to cover in advance for fear of awkward silence or when past history makes it too dangerous to surface our truest thoughts and wants.

And sometimes we need to wayfind our way to connection because it’s seemingly totally inaccessible. When a person we love is lost, we need to feel our way in the dark, navigate in new ways, attune to unfamiliar signals that indicate connection is within reach. I didn’t expect to find my deepest, recent connection with my mom through Julie Andrews or Rebecca. Yet because of them, that ailing energy of connection between my mother and I received life giving CPR and it was good.