How does Gallagher use imagery in the closing lines of the poem, I Stop Writing the Poem?

In the last two lines of the poem, Gallagher weaves together a double image. She has the small girl "standing next to her mother," implying that the child is watching her mother do the laundry, fold the clothes. Of course, this is too simple a meaning for these closing lines. The child is obviously the speaker, feeling as a child, possibly turning to her mother, who may have also lived through the death of her husband. At least, this is what is implied. There is something that the mother has endured that has given her a strength that the speaker hopes to learn from her. If the speaker feels that she has lost "being a woman," then the natural place for her to turn would be to her mother, who was the first woman that she knew.