If I Stay

“School’s out forever”

This is an example of foreshadowing in the novel. The words are lyrics from Alice Cooper’s iconic song, “School’s Out For Summer,” they are also ironic here, as Mia’s father, a school teacher, and his son, an elementary school student, will be killed that morning in a car accident. 

“The car is eviscerated. The impact of a four-ton pickup truck going sixty miles an hour plowing straight into the passenger side had the force of an atom bomb”

The phrase “atom bomb” is an apt one because this accident, like an atom bomb, has a devastating effect on Mia’s life; it kills indiscriminately, and creates unforeseen consequences that will forever alter the lives of its victims. 

“The car radio somehow is broadcasting into the once-again tranquil February morning”

While music has traditionally been Mia’s outlet for creative expression, the fact that the radio continues to play after the accident lends the music a disturbing quality. Because music is so effective at triggering memory, it is very likely that the Beethoven Concerto that Mia hears before and after her parents’ deaths will forever spark traumatic memories of the accident. Furthermore, the Beethoven Concerto imbues the accident with surreal and operatic qualities, a fitting combination since Mia’s post-accident journey will place her in a bizarre out-of-body limbo between life and death, and will take on the qualities of an opera with several movements, characters, and a powerful climax. 

“I edge closer and now I know that it’s not Teddy lying there. It’s me”

This passage serves as the introduction to the novel’s central plot device. Throughout her post-accident coma, Mia will be both connected and disconnected from her physical body, existing in a limbo where she can access all of her memories and consciousness but in which she cannot fully inhabit her body or participate in the physical world. This state allows her to perceive her body but not to experience the full physical and emotional shock and pain of the accident and its aftermath.

“I know that something unthinkable has just happened to my family. We are like Humpty Dumpty and all these king’s horses and all these king’s men cannot put us back together again”

Mia’s allusion to a children’s nursery rhyme expresses the way her family has been shattered—her mother and father are horribly disfigured by the accident—and the fact that the damage done by the accident is irreversible. Since it is a nursery rhyme, it is also a reference to youth and childhood innocence, a stage of life that has ended for seventeen year-old Mia in a single moment. 

“I start to zone out. And then I start to wonder about this state I’m in. If I’m not dead—and the heart monitor is bleeping along, so I assume I’m not—but I’m not in my body, either, can I go anywhere? Am I a ghost? Can I pop over to Carnegie Hall in New York City? Can I go to Teddy?”

Mia tries to understand the limbo she is in while her physical body is comatose. While her out-of-body self can move about the hospital, recall important memories, observe her present state, and monitor the movements of her friends and family, she is hindered by several limitations. She cannot move through walls; she cannot feel or touch anything, and she is unable to wander too far from her physical body. This quote illustrates both the abilities and limitations of Mia’s out-of-body state of being.

“I want you to play me like a cello”

Adam’s request to Mia is a turning point in their relationship and a reminder that music has the power to help us live in the moment. Up until this point, Mia and Adam have struggled to overcome their awkwardness around each other. Not sure how to be natural together, or how to move past this self-conscious and overly polite phase, Adam suggests that Mia touch him the way she touches her cello. While this seems like an absurd notion, his request is meant to transfer the natural emotion and uninhibited focus that characterize her cello playing to the act of touching his body. In doing so, Mia is able to break free of the awkward behavior that characterized their early relationship.

“You might think that the doctors or nurses or all this is running the show…She’s running the show”

Nurse Ramirez’s words, that Mia, rather than the doctors or nurses, is ultimately in charge of her own destiny, mark an important moment in the text. While Mia will spend the remainder of the novel agonizing over her choice, Nurse Ramirez has effectively empowered her to choose her own fate.

“I decide, I know this now”

Though the suggestion that Mia is in charge of choosing her destiny is made on page 82, it is not until this point that Mia realizes the power she has her over her own future. The ability to choose, and the agony that accompanies that choice, will become the driving force of the novel.

“I’m sorry, young man, but visitations are restricted to immediate family”

The senior nurse’s refusal to allow Adam to see Mia in the ICU suggests a lack of consideration or empathy, as she would prefer to uphold the rules rather than allow a grieving young man to visit his injured girlfriend. Her use of the phrase “immediate family” is particularly callous, as literally all of Mia’s “immediate family” has been killed. If taken literally, this policy would mean that Mia would have to battle for survival without the support of her remaining loved ones. 

“Kim and I have this theory that almost everything in the world can be divided into two groups”

This quote is important for two reasons. It demonstrates the shared philosophies of Mia and Kim, best friends who share a similar appearance, sense of humor, and world-views, but it also illustrates the novel’s tendency to categorize human experience in binary terms: rock and classical, life and death, staying and going, choice and chance, past and present, material body and immaterial spirit. 

“After about a week, it started to gel and I got my first taste of being a cog in the machine. It made me hear the cello in an entirely new way, how its low tones worked in concert with the viola’s higher notes, how it provided a foundation for the woodwinds on the other side of the orchestra pit"

Up until this point, Mia’s musical training has been a solitary and isolating experience. After arriving at the Summer Camp Conservatory in British Columbia, Mia is exposed to a different kind of playing, in combination with other gifted performers. It is a watershed moment in her musical education that exposes her to new friends, new sonic landscapes, and the new challenge of learning to play with people, rather than playing for herself.

“And even though you might think that being part of a group would make you relax a little, not care so much how you sounded blended among everyone else, if anything, the opposite was true” 

This quote underscores the challenge of playing with other people, and the difficulty of seamlessly blending multiple instruments, musicians, and playing styles into one cohesive and unified sound. Mia learns that playing as part of an ensemble is even more difficult than playing solo because one must learn to play in perfect pitch, harmony and tempo with others.

“Amazing things happen when you stop hiding behind that hulking beast.”

When Simon, a fellow student at the conservatory, says this to Mia, he reminds Mia that the cello’s greatest potential and power cannot be realized in the relative comfort of familiar practice habits and the kind of solitary playing that characterized much of Mia’s formative cello training. Instead, it can only be realized when the musician is willing to push themselves beyond their comfort zone. 

“Teddy is never going to graduate from T-ball to baseball. He’s never going to grow a mustache. Never going to get into a fistfight or shoot a deer or kiss a girl or have sex or fall in love or get married or father his own curly-haired child. I’m only years older than him, but it’s like I’ve already had so much more life. It is unfair. If one of us should have been left behind, if one of us should be given the opportunity for more life, it should be him”

In this quote, Mia repeats the word never in an attempt to comprehend the fact that Teddy has not survived the accident. This litany of “never” is a painful and bitter outline of all the coming-of-age experiences that Teddy will never get to enjoy. Not only does Mia lament Teddy’s premature death, but she expresses survivor’s guilt, wishing that Teddy had survived the accident instead of her.

“I’m not sure this is a world I belong in anymore. I’m not sure that I want to wake up”

If Mia decides to wake up, survive, and stay she will not only have to overcome her formidable physical injuries, but will have to learn to survive without her immediate family. Because Mia’s formative experiences were all centered around her immediate family, surviving means learning to live an entirely new life. While waking up means living, it also means she will have to experience the full onslaught of her grief

"Why can’t someone else decide for me? Why can’t I get a death proxy?...Can’t I have a pinch hitter take me home?”

The ability to choose is often seen as a form of self-empowerment and agency; however, the ability to choose can also be a terrible burden. 

“It’s okay if you want to leave us. It’s okay if you want to stop fighting”

For the first time since the accident, Mia hears someone acknowledge that she has the ability to choose between living and dying, and that she is justified in choosing to quit the fight and release herself from suffering. While most of us are taught that fighting through pain and suffering is virtuous, Though Gramps’ words run counter to conventional notions of fighting and survival, his speech expresses selflessness and empathy, prioritizing Mia’s peace over his personal preferences. 

“Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you”

When Mia’s dad discusses his decision to quit his band and musical career with her, he explains that “sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you” (192). This advice not only relates to Mia’s choice to live or die, but also recalls the multiple choices that shape the direction and destiny of our lives. 

“Dad wrote the song ages ago, but no it feels like he wrote it yesterday. Like he wrote it from wherever he is. Like there’s a secret message in it for me. How else to explain those lyrics? I’m not choosing. But I’m running out of fight”

Mia’s father may have perished in the accident, but his music and his lyrics live on in her consciousness, not only expressing her state of mind and being, but providing wisdom and insight into her present crisis. 

“So I played. And even though you wouldn’t think it, the cello didn’t sound half bad with all those guitars. In fact, it sounded pretty amazing”

Though rock music and classical music are often considered polar opposites, this scene, where Mia plays an impromptu concert with her father and boyfriend, represents music’s power to create a common bond that can bridge all of life’s divides.  

“I’m feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill. But I’m also feeling all that I have in my life, which includes what I have lost, as well as the great unknown of what life might still bring me. And it’s all too much”

The final climactic episode of the novel—accompanied by the music of Yo-Yo Ma--fittingly mimics the sound of an orchestra as Mia faces the overwhelming burden of past, present and future in one escalating flood of image and emotion. It marks the first time she has had to directly confront the full reality of her pain and loss. 

“The feelings pile up, threatening to crack my chest wide-open. The only way to survive them is to concentrate on Adam’s hand. Grasping mine”

Though Mia cannot overcome all of this pain on her own, Adam’s hand in hers represents the lifeline of love and support that will give her the strength to overcome this onslaught of pain and to survive in spite of it.