Maria Bamford book: My mother was my first cult leader.

I love groups. I love social orders that I can push against while still being held by snug boundaries of membership. Like a baby defecating securely in a diaper. I treasure organizations (in their softer forms). If they’re not so unbending that I’m thrown out, then I am allowed to be a contradictory pain in the ass. I want belonging in a thing, but I won’t want any of the responsibilities inherent in claiming association. I never worry I’ll be a fascist because of ongoing resistance to “pitching in.”

If our family was a cult and we had a leader, our leader was my mom, Marilyn. She was beloved, was charismatic, and inspired intense devotion. Back in 2020, I went to Duluth, Minnesota, for a three-month visit to be with Mother Bamford in her final days on Earth. I was 51 and finally on the right meds, so it was like getting a second chance at growing up in beautiful northern Minnesota, one in which I had a brain that functions. My mom, despite being an oracle, was dying.

A metastasized tumor growing in her lung was pressing on her aortic blood vessel, so she was coughing up blood occasionally. She was in her bed at St. Mary’s Medical Center in downtown Duluth, chatting spryly about the DNR (do-not-resuscitate) order she was about to sign. My mom may have been sick, but she had not lost all of her powers. My mom is a master of getting to know strangers seemingly instantaneously. She can squeeze joy out of a customer-service call.

By Maria Bamford. Gallery Books.

Slate receives a commission when you purchase items using the links on this page. Thank you for your support.

Typically, by the time she gets off the phone with AT&T, three hours have passed and she has made a rich and joyful connection with a 28-year-old Black man in an Atlanta call center. Or a young Brazilian woman in a São Paulo call center. Or a Sikh man in a Mumbai call center. Or a white evangelical lady—“but not the bad kind; she had a sense of humor about herself. A fun Baptist”—in a Michigan call center. A nurse came into Mom’s room and in less than five minutes, my mother had amassed the following info about Ellie the nurse:

Before becoming a nurse, Ellie worked for 10 years as an accounting director in Seattle. Ellie did NOT enjoy being an accounting director.

However, Ellie loved rescuing animals and would spend all her free time caring for diabetic cats and disabled dogs.

Ellie met a drummer from Duluth.

Ellie realized that her “bliss” was caring for others.

Upon coming to this realization, Ellie quit her lucrative accounting job and the very next day applied to nursing school.

The first job Ellie applied for (this one) was the one she got, and now she is in Duluth with her Duluthian drummer hub.

Her husband is an excellent drummer but doesn’t know the Duluth band Low (which was fronted by Alan Sparhawk and his much-mourned wife, Mimi Parker), nor is he familiar with the Duluth-based singer-songwriter and disability-rights activist Gaelynn Lea, who won NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016.

Ellie’s husband is having a hard time finding musicians to play with in Duluth.

Ellie’s nursing mentor is my mom’s neighbor and a fellow Episcopalian who made us really good lasagna the other night.

THIS IS WITHIN LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES.

I recently had to make a customer-service call to hotels.com and attempted to pull a Marilyn. Although a constant traveler, I don’t always pick up on the cues that I might be staying in a flophouse. I also take pride in staying anywhere I am put. I never complain or send anything back. I will eat ANYTHING. I will stay ANYWHERE. I WILL COMPLAIN TO NO ONE, much less the underpaid employee in front of me.

I reserved my husband Scott and me a room at a Days Inn in Duluth that’s right on the freeway. I got there first; Scott was arriving a week later. I didn’t want us to stress my mom and dad by taking up their basement, sleeping till noon, and eating all of my dad’s Fig Newtons.

Dad: You found my supply!

Me [covered in crumbs]: Please, Papa, forgive me.

An inexpensive chain motel/flophouse known to all road comics is a two-star way station. It looks like a hotel—there are towels, beds, cable! But here are the things that I didn’t notice for the seven days I was there before Scott arrived:

Sopping wet carpet (I figured it had just been washed—it’s the cleanest!)

Strong smell of mold and cigarette smoke

Woman next door vomiting all day and night and crying out, “It will never end!” (She had a friend in the room with her trying to help. I had just assumed she was going through something and put in earplugs.)

Man on other side, getting daily visits from a social worker bringing groceries and court updates. (I thought he was getting Grubhub.)

Scott arrived and noticed all of this within 15 minutes. Because we have the cash, at Scott’s request, I moved us to a quiet Airbnb and I attempted a Marilyn as we left the wet, moldy crisis center also known as the Days Inn.

The young, uncombed concierge at the front desk told me, “Yeah, uh, you have to call the 1-800 number, but, um, they probably won’t give you a refund because you bought the room in advance.” Oh. We’re fucked. I see. I said, “Thank you,” and did as the young roustabout suggested.

I called hotels.com.

I asked David from hotels.com where he was from (San Salvador, El Salvador). I attempted Spanish but couldn’t make it past greetings. In English, I thanked him for his time, verbally bowing with solicitous apologies for his troubles. Unhelpfully, I told him I had been to Honduras once. After this building of goodwill, I explained—not angrily but in a lovingly descriptive way—our unique experiences at the Days Inn. The light flooding, the disturbing noises, the ennui. David was gracious. He sadly notified me (as foretold by the bedhead concierge) that he wouldn’t be able to do anything because the room was prepurchased. I expressed gratitude: “I appreciate you even trying, David. I can’t even imagine how hard your job is.” And it’s true. I cannot. I got fired within two hours of having a call-center job.

Subsequently, David put me on hold for about 13 whole minutes. And then he RETURNED! Whereupon David in El Salvador gave us a FULL REFUND FOR THE REMAINDER OF OUR BOOKING. I will never attain my mother’s grace, but I did get $1,100 back from hotels.com, which, from what I understand, is a MIRACLE.

Even still, I could never out-Marilyn Marilyn. My mom was in the hospital again after several trips to the ER. She had a fever, atrial fibrillation, and pain in her esophagus. She was actively dying. A young nurse in training was having trouble getting her blood pressure, and my mom cheerfully said, “I’m so glad I was there to help someone learn!” She curiously asked every nurse where they had gone to nursing school and how they thought the school they went to compared with other local schools. She got the names of their children, the cities the children had moved to, and what jobs they now held.

If my mom exuded healing warmth, I am a cold stone. In those last months, I tried to observe my mother’s every move and transform myself into one of the happiest, most socially engaged people I have ever known. (I’ve got the voice impersonation down, but that’s it.)

My mom wasn’t perfect. She liked her girls to shine. She was not totally pumped that I’d taken three months away from L.A. to come to Duluth. For her death. On her brand-new, free hospice deathbed (TREAT YOURSELF, GO HOSPICE!), she encouraged me to go back to L.A. so I could be on a Food Network television show called Nailed It! and a game show hosted by Meredith Vieira called 25 Words or Less. But I told her that I was busy being with her. Making bank is NOT what Marilyn would do if she were in the same position. She would be there for her loved ones. So I’m sorry, Mom, that I didn’t make a few thousand in cable residuals, but in this instance, you were (dead?) wrong.

Like any leader, my mom had strong opinions—and I look for that now in friends, swing dance classes, the 12-step cults. SHOW ME THE WAY! Someone who will tell me what the exact right thing is to do. For my mom, Nordstrom is GOOD. T.J. Maxx is GOOD. Ann Taylor is NOT GOOD. (Cheaply made? Store lighting? I don’t know! Do not question it! HAVE FAITH!) Delta Airlines is GOOD. (Because it is based in Minnesota?) American Airlines is BAD. People whom my mother knows are GOOD. Anyone she doesn’t know is SUSPECT until proven GOOD once she knows them ALMOST IMMEDIATELY. Once she gets more info on you, you gain value and she will describe you in glowing terms to spread the word. It wasn’t until she died that I realized that what she called GOOD was arbitrary. GOOD means known, but it’s also a conscious decision to see it as GOOD.

My mom will rehire the painter who drinks on the job and tramps Benjamin Moore on the wood floor because she decides that he is GOOD in some way: His wife had a kidney transplant, he’s a mensch, or he understands color relationships. The point being, she doesn’t know GOOD from BAD any more than I do—she just chooses to claim one thing as the best over another.

I take Delta and stay at Hilton properties (Hampton Inns, mostly) because they remind me of the GOOD that is my mother—even though I’ve had a few experiences that have been less than GOOD. (How does every Delta flight going back to L.A. stop in Atlanta even if you are starting in Salt Lake City? And I have stayed in a past-its-prime Hilton DoubleTree where I was refused a third cookie and there was an American melting pot–diverse variety of pubes surrounding the sweating toilet.) But my mom’s certainty in the greatness of a person, place, or thing is what is great. I hope to be like her one day and choose to see the GREATNESS of everything in my path. But once I meet or have an experience or product that my mom has said was GOOD, I argue that I kind of make it BAD with my presence.

This is my conundrum. My mom was The Best. The Greatest of All of the Times. She always picked up the phone! She planned our wedding and split the bill! She visited me in the psych ward every day and paged through O Magazine for two hours sitting next to me—a trembly 40-year-old in pj’s next to an orange plastic cigarette bucket! She went to my show anytime I was within three hours’ drive! She counseled me (and my friends)! She forgave me over and over again for being a killjoy on topics ranging from her love of God—

Me: Hey, Mom, What Would Jesus Buy? WWJB?

Mom: Aagh. Honey. OK. Jesus probably wouldn’t buy much, but if he did, he’d want it to be good quality.

Me: I bet Jesus loved a SALE!

Mom [tired]: OK, honey. Ha-ha-ha.

—or mocking her anticipatory joy over anything:

Mom: Ever since I was a little girl [a common refrain], I’ve always wanted to go to the Russian Tea Room [Amsterdam in spring / buy a diamond solitaire from Tiffany / see a pope]!

Me: I thought ever since you were a little girl you wanted to stay at the Ritz-Carlton West Palm Beach.

Mom: I know. It’s true. You laugh, but it’s true.

My mom is a baller. She went to therapy with me when I was a young adult (21)! The therapist asked her, ill-advisedly, “Marilyn, who’s your favorite daughter?”

Mom: Well … Sarah.

Sarah’s her favorite! I KNEW IT. And I get it. Her daughter Sarah didn’t just ask her to drive six hours round trip to Minneapolis for an amateurish, confrontational bitch-slap. My mom then, LIKE A CHAMP—DESPITE BEING SET UP FOR A SUCKER PUNCH to the twat—stayed for the REST OF THE SESH to hear how her having a “favorite” daughter might be a problem.

Mom’s role as a charismatic leader also inspired a devotion to trying to please her. One of the best ways to do this was with news. Marilyn LOVED NEWS! And it had to be EXCEPTIONAL! Scott called this “Marilyn getting something in her beak!” And you couldn’t predict what the showstopper would be.

If I called my mom and said I had just done a show in San Francisco, that might be good enough, but it might not quicken her breath or get her interrupting me for details. But if I did a show and a celebrity was in the audience—well, then. That goes in the beak! With this piece of tinfoil in her craw, she’d fly to her phone, telling everyone about it.

When I got the very book deal that would become the book this excerpt comes from, I knew she wasn’t feeling well because she just said, “Oh. [Cough.] Good for you, kiddo.” A year before she died, I told her my work was featured in the New York Times and the New Yorker in the same week. Exhausted, she was not exactly blasé, but I had to repeat the news again to make sure she’d heard.

Me: Mom, I’m in the New York Times and the New Yorker. This week. IN ONE WEEK.

Mom: I know, honey, that’s great. [Struggling to breathe.] I’m so … proud of you.

Yes, I nagged a mortally ill woman for additional recognition after her 76 years of service.

In the months before she died, my mom posted on Facebook a well-worn quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson on the definition of success:

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the beauty in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded.

Whaaaaat? I love my mom. She was very kind and loving, but I’m not sure, at least to myself and my sister, that the topic sentence of her life’s paragraph was “ENJOY!” What I learned from her was: PAY EVERYONE, SEND THANK-YOU NOTES, always bring a gift, and “KEEP IT HIGH AND TIGHT AND SMILES, LADIES, SMILES!” Now she’s telling me we all have to better the world with a “redeemed social condition”?? Jesus Christ Almighty, Marilyn Halverson Bamford.