Spencer - The dead moms club: a memoir about death, grief, and surviving the mother of all losses

H i there. If you are reading this, it most likely means you are a member of one of the crappiest clubs in the world. I would love nothing more than to revoke my own membership to the Dead Moms Club and to turn you away at the door. To rip up our Dead Moms Club ID cards and throw them in an incinerator. But alas, once youre a member of this club, theres no way out. Also, I have no idea how to even find an incinerator, so were definitely stuck.

(And if youre not a member of the Dead Moms Club yet, dont worry! Chances are you will be someday. And regardless, Ive bet youve experienced deep loss and grief in your life, whether it be death, divorce, a pet passing away, or the end of Six Feet Under. The Babysitters Club had junior officers, members who were welcome but not quite at the level of Kristy, Claudia, Dawn, Stacey, and Mary Anne. Thats what well call you.)

Remember how awful your stupid high school literary magazine club was? How insufferable every meeting felt? Thats a walk in the park on a glorious spring day compared to this. I would sit through a lifetime of teenagers discussing their poems about the Beatles if it meant getting my mom back. But as we both knowbecause, you know, our moms are deadlife isnt fair sometimes. Also, poetry about the Beatles is almost certainly going to be awful. These are two things I know to be true.

No one asks to be enrolled in the Dead Moms Club, but since youre now a member, you deserve some support from someone whos been there. Someone who knows just how god-awful it is. Someone whos made it through.

That someone is me.

S ee, Im not just the president of the Dead Moms Club. Im also a client. Wait, no. That dated 90s joke doesnt quite work. But you get what Im trying to say, right? I have a dead mom. I have been there and done that. I know just how bad it really is. Ive been in the Club for a while.

My mom died when I was twenty-seven years old. It was pancreatic cancer; it was fast; it was a nightmare. Just months before her diagnosis, she visited me at my tiny studio apartment in New York City. She slept on my couch, and we went shopping and split bottles of wine. Everything felt right. We were exactly where we needed to be in our relationship: true friends. When the weekend was over, I sent her off up Eighth Avenue, watching her walk toward Penn Station with her tiny suitcase rolling at her side. The next time I saw her, she was in a hospital bed in Boston, cocooned in faded white sheets, a tumor hijacking her pancreas.

After her diagnosis I quit my production assistant job and moved home, back into my childhood bedroom. My younger brother, Andrew, did the same, and together with our father we served as my mothers caregivers until she died in the middle of an icy March night. We were huddled at her feet, sleeping around the hospital bed we had installed in my parents bedroom. She took a few last sips of air, and then she left us.

Her illness and death transformed my life in extraordinary ways. It changed everything. For one hot second there I even entertained the idea of becoming a social worker, because my life felt so completely meaningless. But then I realized I would make a terrible social worker, and I snapped out of it, sticking to the stable, lucrative career of writer and comedian instead. Its what my mom would have wanted.

Knowing my mom, shed probably also have wanted me to turn my grief into something more than just a pyramid of snot-soaked tissues. Because let me tell you, when it comes to gut-stabbing, endless sadnessthe kind that feels like a Chuck E. Cheeses ball pit that you cant seem to climb out ofI have been there. Ive logged my ten thousand hours of weeping, making me a Malcolm Gladwellapproved genius at sobbing into an Ikea couch pillow. I have fallen into the deepest of lowshorrible, dark places from which I thought Id never escape. And yet here I am, typing these words right now to you. I am even wearing actual pants, so you know Im doing all right. (Okay fine, theyre leggings. But still.)

I made it through. I have lived through the loss of my mom and survived, and you can, too. Do I still have unstoppable bouts of crying after watching Stepmom? Of course, Im only human. Everyone needs a good Susan-Sarandon-and-Julia-Roberts-inspired sob fest every now and then. But still, Im functioning. Im making it. And thats what I am here to tell you. You got this.

The Dead Moms Club is my story of dealing with my own grief, as well as all the weird, unexpected things that came along with it. (Disordered eating! Who knew?) I can only venture to speak to my own experience, since Ive only had and lost my mom, Martha Spencer, amazing listener, occasional grudge-holder, lover of Days of Our Lives and Oprah Winfrey, proud feminist, and caring human who bought birthday cards in bulk so shed always have one to send. Good Lord, I miss her.