What does 'that she thought away' mean in this poem? [closed]

manpreet Best Answer 3 years ago

I can't understand the italicized part of the following poem, My Mother at Sixty-six by Kamala Das:

Driving from my parent’s
home to Cochin last Friday
morning, I saw my mother,
beside me,
doze, open mouthed, her face
ashen like that
of a corpse and realised with
pain
that she thought away, and
looked but soon
put that thought away, and
looked out at young
trees sprinting, the merry children spilling
out of their homes,