If I Stay

Mom guffawed, as if Henry’s statement had proven her point. We all turned to her, and our shocked expressions seemed to snap her out of her rant. “Clearly I’m just emotional right now,” she said. Dad seemed to understand that was as much an apology as he was going to get right now. He covered her hand with his and this time she didn’t snatch it away.

Dad paused, hesitating before speaking. “I just think that funerals are a lot like death itself. You can have your wishes, your plans, but at the end of the day, it’s out of your control.”

“No way,” Henry said. “Not if you make your wishes known to the right people.” He turned to Willow and spoke to the bump in her belly. “So listen up, family. At my funeral no one is allowed to wear black. And for music, I want something poppy and old-school, like Mr. T Experience.” He looked up at Willow. “Got that?”

“Mr. T Experience. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Thanks, and what about you, honey?” he asked her.

Without missing a beat, Willow said: “Play ‘P.S. You Rock My World’ by the Eels. And I want one of those green funerals where they bury you in the ground under a tree. So the funeral itself would be in nature. And no flowers. I mean, give me all the peonies you want when I’m alive, but once I’m dead, better to give donations on my behalf to a good charity like Doctors Without Borders.”

“You’ve got all the details figured out,” Adam said. “Is that a nurse thing?”

Willow shrugged.

“According to Kim, that means you’re deep,” I said. “She says that the world is divided into the people who imagine their own funerals and the people who don’t, and that smart and artistic people naturally fall into the former category.”

“So which are you?” Adam asked me.

“I’d want Mozart’s Requiem,” I said. I turned to Mom and Dad. “Don’t worry, I’m not suicidal or anything.”

“Please,” Mom said, her mood lightening as she stirred her coffee. “When I was growing up I’d have elaborate fantasies about my funeral. My deadbeat father and all the friends who’d wronged me would weep over my casket, which would be red, naturally, and they’d play James Taylor.”

“Let me guess,” Willow said. “‘Fire and Rain’?”

Mom nodded and she and Willow started laughing and soon everyone at the table was cracking up so hard that tears ran down our faces. And then we were crying, even me, who didn’t know Kerry all that well. Crying and laughing, laughing and crying.

“So what now?” Adam asked Mom when we’d calmed down. “Still harbor a soft spot for Mr. Taylor?”

Mom stopped and blinked hard, which is what she does when she’s thinking about something. Then she reached over to stroke Dad’s cheek, a rare demonstration of PDA. “In my ideal scenario, my bighearted pushover husband and I die quickly and simultaneously when we’re ninety-two years old. I’m not sure how. Maybe we’re on a safari in Africa—’cause in the future, we’re rich; hey, it’s my fantasy—and we come down with some exotic sickness and go to sleep one night feeling fine and then never wake up. And no James Taylor. Mia plays at our funeral. If, that is, we can tear her away from the New York Philharmonic.”

Dad was wrong. It’s true you might not get to control your funeral, but sometimes you do get to choose your death. And I can’t help thinking that part of Mom’s wish did come true. She went with Dad. But I won’t be playing at her funeral. It’s possible that her funeral will also be mine. There’s something comforting in that. To go down as a family. No one left behind. That said, I can’t help thinking Mom would not be happy about this. In fact, Mama Bear would be absolutely furious with the way events are unfolding today.

2:48 A.M.

I’m back where I started. Back in the ICU. My body, that is. I’ve been sitting here all along, too tired to move. I wish I could go to sleep. I wish there was some kind of anesthesia for me, or at least something to make the world shut up. I want to be like my body, quiet and lifeless, putty in someone else’s hands. I don’t have the energy for this decision. I don’t want this anymore. I say it out loud. I don’t want this. I look around the ICU, feeling kind of ridiculous. I doubt all the other messed-up people in the ward are exactly thrilled to be here, either.

My body wasn’t gone from the ICU for too long. A few hours for surgery. Some time in the recovery room. I don’t know exactly what’s happened to me, and for the first time today, I don’t really care. I shouldn’t have to care. I shouldn’t have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.

I’m back on the ventilator, and once again there’s tape over my eyes. I still don’t understand the tape. Are the doctors afraid that I’ll wake up mid-surgery and be horrified by the scalpels or blood? As if those things could faze me now. Two nurses, the one assigned to me and Nurse Ramirez, come over to my bed and check all my monitors