I wrote this randomly and out of the blue, edited it five gazillion times, and am now sharing it. Here's a trick question: Is this entirely fiction (likely), or true?


I do not. I do not have a mother. Some of my friends complain about how embarrassing their mother is, others of how protective. I can’t complain, because my mother is dead. There were four other people in the room at the time, but I was the only one who knew when she died. I was the one who was able to watch and see her last breath. She didn’t look like my mother when she died; she looked like someone who had given up, and my mother never gave up.

I felt so guilty the day she died. I’d barely talked to her since she came home. When we found out her cancer had come back, I had practically decided she was dead already. I wanted to say goodbye, but I didn’t want to deal with my family. I was the youngest in the house, so they all tried to comfort me. It irked my thirteen-year-old mind and drove me to my bedroom night after night without a sight of my dying mother. I didn’t want to be babied; didn’t want them to comfort me when I didn’t need it. It’s as if they didn’t see how I acted and only thought about how I should be acting in their minds.

The day before she died was tedious to me. I’d gone to school, and play practice had run extra long. It was almost eight by the time I got home, and when I did, my sister and my aunt made me sit down in my itchy uniform on the wet grass so they could tell me what they’d told me the week before: my mother didn’t have much time. I already knew that, so it was another annoyance on my list.

What caught my attention was the fact she’d been asking for me all day. The first thing I did was give them my bag and run in the house, up the stairs, and to her bedside. For some odd reason, it was the first time I’d felt hope that maybe, somehow, it might work out. Maybe I wouldn’t be stuck with someone I didn’t want to live with, or maybe I’d get to see her for Christmas like everyone said. But she was passed out from painkillers, so she didn’t wake up.

Later, we all put on wacky glasses and had a party in her room for her, like she’d asked for. When she woke up, she looked at all the faces around her, from my sister, to my aunts and so on. I was behind her bed, but my arm was on her pillow, and she saw it. The way she looked at me, it reminded me of my own face when I was little; I’d get home from a bad day at school and she’d be waiting there with a hug. She yelled out my nickname, threw her arms around me, and pulled me down to her.

What broke my heart was that she didn’t look like my mother anymore. The cancer had swollen her stomach and legs up, emaciating the rest of her body. She looked sick. When she’d gone through treatment, she’d come home normal every day, but now she looked sick. It scared me, and made me ashamed almost, that the woman I loved the most looked like that.

Days later at her funeral, I remembered how she’d told me once that she wanted everyone to wear polka dots to her funeral. I grabbed a polka dotted skirt, and ignored the looks I got from the rest of my family. Later, my dad even told me that some people wanted to make me change. But I know, for a fact, that she would’ve told them that they needed to change.

The week my mom died, I was only absent from school for one day. That week was the production week for the play at school; the play I was in. I went to practice dutifully and I gave it my all on opening night, entirely forgetting my mom wasn’t in the crowd, much less on this earth, and I absorbed myself into drama. I’d come home with a huge smile on my face and a million jokes. Of course, that just drove my family to tell my dad I wasn’t dealing with the death and that I needed a therapist.

At her funeral, I did cry. But after, my friends and I rolled around on the grass and laughed our heads off. I just know that wherever she went, she was laughing and smiling along with me. I still miss her all the time. It’s surreal to have to go through high school, boyfriends, first dates, and whatnot without a mother there. I always counted on her, imagined her at my graduation and my wedding, but now I’ll never see her face when I receive a diploma or when I walk down the aisle. But I don’t give up; I let myself have fun and be a teenager because I know she would’ve wanted me to.