Barbara Jo Walker

It's not easy to grow up as the kid who says 'No'. I would show up to birthday parties in the '80s and tell people I couldn't eat the cake because it contained a modified molecule that would someday be banned. Like all lessons from my mother, this was a strange gift. I learned to stand in a room and say "No" while my entire world did not believe there could be a conscientious objector on birthday cakes. My young and growing brain wondered about the nature of the lesson.

I grew up on my mother's stories of hanging out at the mall with her sister peering at their skeletons. She told me that shoe stores in the '40s had a fluoroscope machine; an always-on X-Ray that people could use to watch bones move in their feet. I told her that was crazy and that everybody knew X-Rays were dangerous. She laughed to herself, then asked me how everybody knew. Her questions were constant, gentle, threw you sideways, and burned you up inside. At the time, I didn't understand what I was learning. Within each lesson was another lesson, carefully hidden. These matryoshka dolls stacked neatly on a shelf with Babar and the Little Prince, hinting at mysteries.

Always, I strove to discover the lesson. In her mid-fifties, my mother went back to school briefly to earn her masters so she could volunteer at the UALR Writing Center. The same careful eye that critiqued every paper I had ever written in school was now sending me notes on critical communications I published out of the agency as a senior government official, reading in one pass for nuance, danger, and art. Her questions were the economical strokes of a master who loathed blunt instruments. Construct your case with gossamer; puncture arguments with a rapier.

Fluoroscopes were banned by the FDA in 1971. By 2015, they banned artificial trans fats previously baked into every grocery birthday cake in America. My mother never celebrated being twenty years ahead of her time. That would have been too loud and too hard to defend.

A few years ago, my mother was discussing her terminal cancer with her doctor. She had come to the visit carrying a bundle of research papers regarding her rare form of cancer, each of which documented the complete failure of chemotherapy to retard the disease in any way. When she asked her doctor why he would even consider chemo given the evidence his surprise lasted only a few moments before he shrugged, leaned back on his stool, and said: "most people expect us to make an attempt." My mother, of course, only expected the truth.

Barbara Jo Walker spent all 30 months of her 6-month prognosis focused on sharing experiences with her grandchildren. She spent a year living with my family, teaching my oldest to write and inviting him to look inside himself and ask questions. She spent another year on my sister's farm in Columbus, Ohio, helping her granddaughter raise chickens. A few weeks ago she went sledding with her grandchildren, racing down the hill with the same informed abandon she used to jump out of airplanes and sail through a class IV hurricane.

My mother would never let one of her writing students get away with a formal obituary and pass up the opportunity to tell a story. Words take time, and there's only so much.

Barbara passed away on January 11 in Columbus, Ohio. She lived intentionally and died free. Thank you for reading.

Barbara insists that flowers are not sustainable but that books can sustain you for a lifetime, and that any donations in her name be sent to your local library. Family has entrusted SCHOEDINGER NORTHWEST with final arrangements. Please visit www.schoedinger.com to share a memory or to send a condolence.