If I Stay: 2:48 AM Summary & Analysis

After several hours in surgery, Mia’s body is returned to the ICU in stable condition. Willow convinces the nurses to let Mia’s grandparents visit her. While Gran is as chatty as ever and tells Mia all of the family news, Gramps looks exhausted from the day’s events. Gran reports that she saw a crossbill on her walk, a bird that is unusual in their part of Oregon. Gran believes that the bird is a reincarnation of her sister Glo, returned to show support for Mia.

As Mia listens to Gran drone on, she thinks about how nice it would be to fall asleep to the sound of her voice. Death, she thinks, might be like one, long, satisfying nap. She pulls herself back to the present in a panic, worried that if she meditates on the thought of sleep as death, then she may actually die, according to the ambiguous rules of this out-of-body experience. Mia wonders if all dying people have these kinds of choices, and if her parents perhaps had a choice, too. She hopes that all of the angels Gran believes in were too busy comforting Teddy as he slipped away to worry about Mia, which is why she is left alone with the choice to stay or to go. Mia wishes someone else could decide for her—a “death proxy” who could choose whether she should remain alive or move on to join her family in death.

Eventually Gran and Willow leave the ICU, leaving Mia with Gramps, who cries over Mia’s body. He speaks to her body, telling her that while he wants her to stay more than anything, he will understand if she chooses to go. He is the first person to tell Mia that he understands the tragedy she has been through that day—he understands staying will come with its own challenges, and that to some extent, leaving is the easier option.

In a flashback, Mia recalls that prior to Teddy’s birth, Dad’s band was fairly popular in college towns across the Northwest, and, oddly, Japan. However, once Mom announces she is pregnant for a second time, Dad begins to make changes to his life, such as finally learning how to drive a car (rather than bicycling everywhere) and exchanging his punk-rock wardrobe with a vintage buttoned-up style from the 1950s. He goes back to school and earns his license to teach English.

When Teddy is a few months old, Dad announces he is leaving the band, even though Mom says she’s okay with him continuing to play shows. Henry becomes livid with Dad, and doesn’t speak to him for months. Henry only apologizes for his behavior years later, when he has a daughter of his own, and can finally understand why Dad had to prioritize his family at all costs.

Meanwhile, Gramps is upset at Dad’s transformation into a more parental figure for reasons Mia can’t figure out. Gramps finally explains that he misses the music Dad used to write, as he finds his lyrics to be like poetry. Mia didn’t know her father wrote the lyrics to the songs he played, since he was not the singer of the band. She returns to his band’s albums to listen more closely to the lyrics, and enjoys one song, “Waiting for Vengeance,” in particular. Mia absentmindedly sings it to baby Teddy, which delights her father. Mia asks her father if he is sad that he’s not in the band anymore, and he replies that he doesn’t feel like he gave anything up. Though everyone around him wanted to bargain, he felt as if it was an either-or choice to quit the band and be a better father. “Sometimes,” he tells Mia, “you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.”