Mother

MOTHER is a drama which reveals scrappy family relationships with dark humor, in a story about reconnecting and letting go. MJ is a wannabe blues singer, lost in life but too stubborn to acknowledge it, who waitresses while waiting for her big break. Though she hasn't seen her mother, Blue, for years, when MJ finds out Blue has cancer, the painful, incurable, terminal kind, she finally goes home. That woman has a lot to answer for and MJ knows it's her last chance for resolution. Witty, but also needy and childish, Blue bluntly tells it like it is, consequences be damned. She gave up a successful singing career to raise her family, but she also adores holding that fact over their heads. To MJ she's always been "ninety pounds of pure mean. Cancer doesn't stand a chance." They're at it again almost the second MJ steps through the door. But MJ is thrilled to see her father Charlie, a kind man who maintains a positive, almost deluded, outlook even in the face of Blue's terminal illness. After collapsing and being taken to hospital, Blue pulls MJ aside. She can't bear the thought of ending up on life-support, peeing into a bag, her dignity gone. Know when to leave the party, she always said. Then she drops a bombshell: she needs MJ’s help ending her life. Charlie can't do it, he can't even squish a spider. A darker part of MJ would relish helping her mother leave this earth, while a tender part wants to ease her mother's pain. She's desperate for her mother to acknowledge her mistakes so she can be free but she’s unsure what to do. "Just when I want to kill her, I want to kill her. You know?" she tells her boyfriend. Impatient with MJ's waffling, Blue upends a long-held truth: there never was a singing career. She made it all up. She wanted it and it never happened for her. She wasn’t good enough. Meaning the competitive shadow that MJ felt all these years was all a lie. But MJ knows what her mother’s up to. "You think you'll make me angry enough to kill you? "Wrong, I'm angry enough not to." MJ spirals downward in a self-destructive bender. But when an old friend helps her see that she's more like her mother than she ever understood, for better or worse she's who she is because of Blue, MJ chooses to forgive. Returning home, she finds her mother motionless, but alive, with half-digested pills on her pillow. The very thing Blue was trying to avoid. At the hospital, MJ has the talk with Blue they should have had. It's easier with Blue in a coma. Blue definitely wasn't like other moms, who came to soccer games or said good for you every once in a while. She was the mom who signed MJ out of school when she wanted to go shopping. The mom who swore. And she did her best. MJ finally, truly forgives her. She secures the door and says "I'm doing this for you." The family gathers at Blue's wake and, for now, everyone is connected.