I'm Glad My Mom Died(3)
Mom reminisces about cancer the way most people reminisce about vacations. She even goes so far as to MC a weekly rewatch of a home video she made shortly after learning of her diagnosis. Every Sunday after church, she has one of the boys pop in the VHS tape since she doesn’t know how to work the VCR.
“All right, everyone, shhhhh. Let’s be quiet. Let’s watch and be grateful for where Mommy is now,” Mom says.
Even though Mom says we’re watching this video so we can be grateful that she’s okay now, there’s something about watching this video that just doesn’t sit right with me. I can tell how uncomfortable it makes the boys, and it definitely makes me uncomfortable too. I don’t think any of us wants to be revisiting memories of our bald, sad, then-dying mom, but none of us express this.
The video starts playing. Mom sings lullabies to all four of us kids while we sit around her on the couch. And much like the video remains the same every time it’s played, so too do Mom’s comments. Every single time we rewatch this video, Mom comments on how the heaviness was just “too much for Marcus to handle,” so he had to keep going off into the hallway to collect himself and come back in again. She says this in a way that lets us know it’s the highest compliment. Marcus being distraught about Mom’s terminal illness is a testament to what an incredible person he is. Then she comments on what a “stinker” I was, but she says the word “stinker” with such a venomous bite that it might as well be a cuss word. She goes on to say how she can’t believe I wouldn’t stop singing “Jingle Bells” at the top of my lungs when the mood was clearly so sad. She can’t believe how I didn’t get that. How could I possibly be so upbeat when my surroundings were so obviously heavy? I was two.
Age is no excuse. I feel tremendous guilt every time we rewatch the home video. How could I not have known better? What a stupid idiot. How could I have not sensed what Mom needed? That she needed all of us to be serious, to be taking the situation as hard as we possibly could, to be devastated. She needed us to be nothing without her.
Even though I know the technicalities of Mom’s cancer story—the chemo, the bone marrow transplant, the radiation—are all words that will evoke a big, shocked reaction from whoever hears them, like they can’t believe Mom had it so hard, to me they’re just technicalities. They mean nothing.
But what does mean something to me is the general air in the McCurdy household. The best way I can describe it is that, for as far back as I can remember, the air in the house has felt like a held breath. Like we’re all in a holding pattern, waiting for Mom’s cancer to come back. Between the constant reenactments of Mom’s first bout of cancer and the frequent follow-up visits with doctors, the unspoken mood in the house is heavy. The fragility of Mom’s life is the center of mine.
And I think I can do something about that fragility with my birthday wish.
Finally, the “Happy Birthday” song’s over. The time has come. My big moment. I shut my eyes and take a deep breath in while I make my wish in my head.
I wish that Mom will stay alive another year.
2.
“ONE MORE ROW OF CLIPS and we’ll be done,” Mom says, speaking of the butterfly clips that she’s carefully pinning into my head. I hate this hairstyle, the rows of tightly wound hair fastened into place with painful, scalp-gripping little clips. I’d rather be wearing a baseball cap, but Mom loves this style and says it makes me look pretty, so butterfly clips it is.
“Okay, Mommy,” I say, swinging my legs back and forth while I sit on the closed toilet seat lid. The leg swing is a nice touch. Selling it.
The house phone starts ringing.
“Shoot.” Mom opens the bathroom door and leans out of it, as far as she can go to grab the phone that hangs from the kitchen wall. She does all of this without letting go of the strand of my hair she’s currently working on, so my whole body is leaned all the way over in the same direction that Mom is.
“Hello,” she says into the phone as she answers it. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. WHAT?! Nine p.m.? That’s the earliest?! Whatever, guess the kids will have to get through ANOTHER NIGHT without their DAD. That’s on you, Mark. That’s on you.”
Mom slams the phone down.
“That was your father.”
“I figured.”
“That man, Net, I tell ya. Sometimes I just…” She takes a deep, anxious breath.
“Sometimes you just what?”
“Well I could’ve married a doctor, a lawyer, or an—”
“Indian chief,” I finish for her since I know this catchphrase of hers so well. I asked her once which Indian chief she dated, and she said she didn’t mean it literally, that it’s just a figure of speech, a way of saying she could have had anyone she wanted back in the day before she had children, which has made her less appealing. I told her I was sorry, and she said it was okay, that she’d much rather have me than a man. Then she told me I was her best friend and kissed me on the forehead and, as an afterthought, said that she actually did go on a few dates with a doctor, though: “Tall and ginger, very financially stable.”
Mom keeps clipping my hair.
“Producers too. Movie producers, music producers. Quincy Jones once did a double take when he passed me on a street corner. Honestly, Net, not only could I have married any of those men, but I should have. I was destined for a good life. For fame and fortune. You know how much I wanted to be an actress.”