I'm Glad My Mom Died
Jennette McCurdy
For Marcus, Dustin, and Scottie
Prologue
IT’S STRANGE HOW WE ALWAYS give big news to loved ones in a coma, as if a coma is just a thing that happens from a lack of something to be excited about in your life.
Mom is in the ICU at the hospital. The doctor told us she has forty-eight hours to live. Grandma, Grandpa, and Dad are out in the waiting room calling relatives and eating vending machine snacks. Grandma says Nutter Butters soothe her anxiety.
I’m standing around Mom’s tiny, comatose body with my three older brothers—Marcus (the together one), Dustin (the smart one), and Scott (the sensitive one). I wipe the corners of her crusted-shut eyes with a rag and then it begins.
“Mom,” Together leans over and whispers into Mom’s ear, “I’m gonna move back to California soon.”
We all perk up, excited to see if Mom might suddenly jolt awake. Nothing. Then Smart steps forward.
“Mama. Uh, Mama, Kate and I are getting married.”
Again, we all perk up. Still nothing.
Sensitive steps forward.
“Mommy…”
I’m not listening to what Sensitive says to try and get Mom to wake up because I’m too busy working on my own wake-up material.
And now it’s my turn. I wait until everyone else goes down to grab some food so that I can be alone with her. I pull the squeaky chair close to her bed and sit down. I smile. I’m about to bring the big guns. Forget weddings, forget moving home. I’ve got something more important to offer. Something I’m sure Mom cares about more than anything.
“Mommy. I am… so skinny right now. I’m finally down to eighty-nine pounds.”
I’m in the ICU with my dying mother and the thing that I’m sure will get her to wake up is the fact that in the days since Mom’s been hospitalized, my fear and sadness have morphed into the perfect anorexia-motivation cocktail and, finally, I have achieved Mom’s current goal weight for me. Eighty-nine pounds. I’m so sure this fact will work that I lean all the way back in my chair and pompously cross my legs. I wait for her to come to. And wait. And wait.
But she never does. She never comes to. I can’t make sense of it. If my weight isn’t enough to get Mom to wake up, then nothing will be. And if nothing can wake her up, then that means she’s really going to die. And if she’s really going to die, what am I supposed to do with myself? My life purpose has always been to make Mom happy, to be who she wants me to be. So without Mom, who am I supposed to be now?
before
1.
THE PRESENT IN FRONT OF me is wrapped in Christmas paper even though it’s the end of June. We have so much paper left over from the holidays because Grandpa got the dozen-roll set from Sam’s Club even though Mom told him a million times that it wasn’t even that good of a deal.
I peel—don’t rip—off the paper, because I know Mom likes to save a wrapping paper scrap from every present, and if I rip instead of peel, the paper won’t be as intact as she’d like it to be. Dustin says Mom’s a hoarder, but Mom says she just likes to preserve the memories of things. So I peel.
I look up at everyone watching. Grandma’s there, with her poofy perm and her button nose and her intensity, the same intensity that always comes out when she’s watching someone open a present. She’s so invested in where gifts come from, the price of them, whether they were on sale or not. She must know these things.
Grandpa’s watching too, and snapping pictures while he does. I hate having my picture taken, but Grandpa loves taking them. And there’s no stopping a grandpa who loves something. Like how Mom tells him to stop eating his heaping bowl of Tillamook Vanilla Bean Ice Cream every night before bed because it won’t do any good for his already failing heart, but he won’t. He won’t stop eating his Tillamook and he won’t stop snapping his pictures. I’d almost be mad if I didn’t love him so much.
Dad’s there, half-asleep like always. Mom keeps nudging him and whispering to him that she’s really not convinced his thyroid is normal, then Dad says “my thyroid’s fine” in an irritated way and goes back to being half-asleep five seconds later. This is their usual dynamic. Either this or an all-out scream-fight. I prefer this.
Marcus, Dustin, and Scottie are there too. I love all of them for different reasons. Marcus is so responsible, so reliable. I guess this makes sense since he’s basically an adult—he’s fifteen—but even so, he seems to have a sturdiness to him that I haven’t seen in many other adults around me.
I love Dustin even though he seems a bit annoyed by me most of the time. I love that he’s good at drawing and history and geography, three things I’m terrible at. I try to compliment him a lot on the things he’s good at, but he calls me a brownnoser. I’m not sure what that is exactly, but I can tell it’s an insult by the way he says it. Even so, I’m pretty sure he secretly appreciates the compliments.
I love Scottie because he’s nostalgic. I learned that word in the Vocabulary Cartoons book Mom reads to us every day, because she homeschools us, and now I try to use it at least once a day so I don’t forget it. It really does apply to Scottie. “A sentimentality for the past.” That’s definitely what he has, even though he’s only nine so doesn’t have much of a past. Scottie cries at the end of Christmas and the end of birthdays and the end of Halloween and sometimes at the end of a regular day. He cries because he’s sad that it’s over, and even though it barely is over, he’s already yearning for it. “Yearning” is another word I learned in Vocabulary Cartoons.