Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Denise was there when I got to Rachel’s room, and we didn’t really have anything to say to each other, so we both awkwardly sat there for a while. I felt like I should leave, but I knew that would make me feel even worse. Rachel wasn’t awake. She had pneumonia, apparently.

I really wanted Rachel to wake up. In retrospect, this was stupid and pointless, because I had nothing to say to her, but I just wanted to talk to her again. I sat there staring at her for like an hour. Her frizzy hair was gone, and her mouth was closed, so I couldn’t see her sort of big teeth. And her eyes were closed, so I couldn’t see them, either. So you’d think the person lying there wouldn’t have looked like Rachel at all, but somehow she did.

Actually I was crying the whole time, because for some reason it had never really sunk in with me that she was dying, and now I was literally watching her die, and it was different somehow.

There was just something about her dying that I had understood but not really understood, if you know what I mean. I mean, you can know someone is dying on an intellectual level, but emotionally it hasn’t really hit you, and then when it does, that’s when you feel like shit.

So like an idiot, I hadn’t understood until I was sitting there actually watching her physically die, when it was too late to say or do anything. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to understand it even a little bit. This was a human being, dying. This was the only time there was going to be someone with those eyes and those ears and that way of breathing through her mouth and that way of building up right before a monster laugh with her eyebrows all raised and her nostrils flaring a little bit, this was the only time there was ever going to be that person, living in the world, and now that was almost over, and I couldn’t deal with it.

I was thinking, also, that we had made a film about a thing, death, that we knew nothing about. Maybe Earl sort of knew something, but I knew absolutely nothing about it. Plus we had made a film about a girl who we really hadn’t gotten to know. Actually, we hadn’t made the film about her at all. She was just dying, there, and we had gone and made a film about ourselves. We had taken this girl and used her really to make a film about ourselves, and it just seemed so stupid and wrong that I couldn’t stop crying. Rachel the Film is not at all about Rachel. It’s about how little we know about Rachel. We were so ridiculously arrogant to try to make a film about her.

So I was sitting there and the whole time I had this insane wish for Rachel to wake up and just tell me everything she had ever thought, so that it could be recorded somewhere, so that it wouldn’t be lost. I found myself thinking, what if she’s already had her last thought, what if her brain isn’t producing conscious thoughts anymore, and that was so awful that I started completely bawling, I was making hideous sobbing noises like an elephant seal or something, like: HURNK HURNGK HRUNNNN.

Denise was just sitting there frozen.

At the same time, and I hated myself for this, I was realizing how to make the movie I should have made, that it had to be something that stored as much of Rachel as possible, that ideally we would have had a camera on her for her whole life, and one inside her head, and it made me so bitter and fucking angry that this was impossible, and she was just going to be lost. Just as if she had never been around to say things and laugh at people and have favorite words that she liked to use and ways of fidgeting with her fingers when she got antsy and specific memories that flashed through her head when she ate a certain food or smelled a certain smell like, I dunno, how maybe honeysuckle made her think of one particular summer day playing with a friend or whatever the fuck, or how rain on the windshield of her mom’s car used to look like alien fingers to her, or whatever, and as if she had never had fantasies about stupid Hugh Jackman or visions of what her life was going to be like in college or a whole unique way of thinking about the world that was never going to be articulated to anyone. All of it and everything else she had ever thought was just going to be lost.

And the point of Rachel the Film should really have been to express how awful and shitty that loss was, that she would have become a person with a long awesome life if she had been allowed to continue living, and that this was just a stupid meaningless loss, just a motherfucking loss, a loss loss loss fucking loss, there was no fucking meaning to it, there was nothing good that could come out of it, and I was sitting there thinking about the film and I knew the film would have to have a scene of me losing my shit in the hospital room, and her mom sitting there wordless and dead-eyed like a statue, and I hated myself for having a cold detached part of me that thought this, but I couldn’t help it.

At some point during all this, my mom came in, and if you think it was possible for either of us to talk through all the crying, you may just be stupid.

We had to step out into the hall eventually, but not before Mom had a bizarre interaction with Denise, where she hugged Denise’s body and said some incoherent things while Denise just sat there rigidly.

So Mom and I sat there in two generic institutional chairs in the hallway and tried to get all the crying out of our system, and eventually I was able to talk in short little bursts.

“I just w want her to w , wake up.”

“Oh, honey.”

“It s sucks.”

“You made her very happy.”

“If I m , made her h happy, then why is sn’ sn’t she trying to f fight. Harder.”

“It’s just too hard. Honey. Some things, no one can fight.”

“It sucks.”

“Death happens to everyone.”

“HurrnNRNNNGK.”

This went on for like an hour. I’ll spare you the rest of it. Eventually, we stopped talking, and there was a long silence as people like Gilbert were wheeled around and doctors and nurses strode briskly past them.

Then Mom said: “I’m sorry.”

I thought I knew what she was talking about.

“Well, I just wish you had asked me first.”

“I did ask you first, but I guess I didn’t really give you a choice.”

“Mom, what are you talking about. You didn’t ask me first.”

“Are we talking about the same thing?”

“I’m talking about the stupid pep rally.”

“Oh.”

“What are you talking about.”

“I’m talking about getting you to spend time with Rachel in the first place.”

“The pep rally was way worse.”

“That, I don’t feel bad about. I do feel bad about making you deal with such a difficul—”

“You don’t feel bad about the pep rally?”

“No, but I do feel bad ab—”

“The pep rally was a nightmare. It was literally like a nightmare.”

“If you regret that your beautiful movie was shown to your classmates, then I really don’t know how to respond to that.”

“I can’t believe that you still think that was a good idea. First of all, th—”

“There are some things—”

“Can I just finish?”

“First, there are some—”

“Can I just finish. Mom. Mom, let me finish. Mom. Jesus Christ.”

We were both using Mom’s unstoppable nonstop-stream-of-words move, and I think she was so surprised that I was using it back on her that she actually relented and let me talk.

“Fine. What.”

“Mom. My classmates hated the film. And Earl and I really don’t like it either. We don’t think it’s very good. In fact, we think it’s terrible.”

“If you—”

“Mom, you have to let me finish.”

“Fine.”

“It’s not a good film. OK? Actually, it sucks. Because—Mom, chill—we had pretty good intentions, but that doesn’t mean we made a good film. OK? Because it’s not about her at all. It’s just this embarrassing thing that shows that we don’t even understand anything about her. And also, you’re my mom, so you’re ridiculously biased, and you can’t see that the film actually sucks and doesn’t make any sense.”

“Honey. It’s so creative. It—”

“Just because something is weird and hard to understand doesn’t mean it’s creative. That’s—that’s the whole problem. If you want to pretend like something is good, even when it’s not, that’s when you use the stupid word ‘creative.’ The film sucked. Our classmates hated it.”

“They just didn’t understand it.”

“They didn’t understand it because we made a shitty film.”

“Honey.”

“If it was good, they would have liked it. They would have understood it. And if it was good, maybe it would have helped.”

We were quiet again. Someone a few doors down seemed to be loudly dying. It really did not help the mood.

“Well, maybe you’re right.”

“I am right.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“OK.”

“What you don’t understand is, it’s hard when your children start growing up,” said Mom, and all of a sudden she was crying again, way harder than before, and I had to comfort her. We were doing a Cross-Chair Hug, and physically it was extremely awkward.

Crying semi-hysterically, Mom made a number of points:

• Your friend is dying

• It’s just so hard to watch a child die

• And it’s much harder to watch a friend’s daughter die

• But the hardest is watching your son watching his friend die

• You have to make your own decisions now

• It’s so hard for me to let you make your own decisions

• But I have to let you make your own decisions

• I am so proud of you

• Your friend is dying, and you have been so strong

I wanted to argue with some of this. I hadn’t been strong at all, and I definitely didn’t feel like I had done anything to be proud of. But somehow I knew this was no time for an episode of Excessive Modesty Hour.

We left. I knew I wouldn’t see Rachel again. I just felt kind of empty and exhausted. Mom got me some Kahlúa ice cream with habaneros and bee pollen in it. It tasted OK.

That’s when I knew I was going to make it.