Let's Do the Time Warp Again
Or how I'm stuck in a time loop revisiting the moment I knew my mom would die
I’ve been time traveling lately, friends. And let me tell you, it suuuucks.
I suppose no one said that time loops would be fun. Certainly every story about them - Groundhog Day, Russian Doll, Palm Springs - makes it pretty damn clear that it’s ultimately exhausting and emotionally frustrating and that you have to confront something deep within yourself before you can finally be released.
But still. I hate it here.
Now, before you think I’ve gone all woo (though let’s be honest, I can be a little woo, and don’t even get me started on The Telepathy Tapes. We don’t have time.) I should make clear that I’m not talking about literal time travel. I’m speaking metaphorically, of course.
The past year+ of my life has felt a little like being in that I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel are working the chocolate conveyor belt, stashing candies in their bras and caps because they just keep coming so damn fast. Except instead of chocolates, my conveyor belt has delivered traumas.
But now that I’m on the other side of my mom’s death, those traumas have started to slip free of my proverbial cap—one in particular—and unfortunately they also seem to be little portals to the past, demanding to be examined.
Here’s where I’ve been time traveling to as of late.
It’s late March 2025 and I’ve flown to LA for the AWP conference, where I’ll be on a YA author panel. Except my plans are quickly changing because I’ve also recently learned that my mom hasn’t been feeling well for some time, and she’s finally gotten bloodwork done, and it’s come back all wrong. On my birthday no less.
Worse yet, her (honestly, questionable, IMHO) doctor did an abdominal exam the same day because she’d complained of pain…and he felt something hard.
Cancer, my mind had immediately flashed as I stood on a Brooklyn sidewalk before my favorite coffee shop, hearing the news on my birthday. Wonky blood work + some kind of lump in her abdomen = cancer.
To be honest, I’d long been certain that if, God forbid, my mom ever got cancer it would be a death sentence, because over the years she’d become one of those California Make America Healthy Again people: skeptical of vaccines, convinced that the medical establishment was a death trap, adamant that she’d never take any kind of traditional cancer treatments.
So, of course, given all of this, I’m cancelling half my trip so I can drive up to Santa Barbara to see her.
When I arrive at my parents’ Spanish-style house, she’s downstairs in the family room, sitting with her legs propped up on their dark brown leather sofa. The lights aren’t on, so the room is dim, lit by the diffused overcast light streaming through the French doors. But even so, I can tell right away: she looks sick.
Not just sick. She looks like she’s dying.
Her skin is yellowed, and she’s lost so much weight since I saw her three months ago; her arms seem too thin, and I’m aware of her bones when I hug her. It’s an amount of weight that doesn’t compute with her having told me over the phone that “she’s lost a few pounds” because of the elimination diet her (questionable) doctor put her on for her recent acid reflux. And yet as thin as she is, her legs are horribly swollen, bringing to mind how painfully puffed up my calves and feet were when I had preeclampsia with my daughter.
I immediately have so many questions: when will she get the CT scan her doctor ordered? And when will the results be back? And how many symptoms is she having? And has she made an appointment for a second opinion? Shouldn’t we be consulting oncologists? Shouldn’t we reach out to UCSD or UCLA?
Except I can tell she doesn’t really want to hear any of this, least of all the word oncologist.
Sitting there on that sofa, clearly in discomfort, she’s trying to work on her laptop, which seems absolutely insane to me. It’s the end of the month, which means there’s paperwork to be done for my parents’ small property management business, but also? Fuck the paperwork. Clearly she’s not well.
It is during this visit that I learn she often feels dizzy when she goes up and down the steep stairs to the second floor, so my dad has taken to walking behind her to ensure she doesn’t fall.
It is during this visit that I learn from my brother that he’s suspected for some time that she’s had something wrong with her—and my mind flashes to the hip pain she’s had for years, pain that I implored her to get checked out.
It is during this visit that she shifts from being constipated to incontinent so that not once, not twice, but three times she can’t get to the bathroom in time. Each time I bring her fresh clothes, and after the second time she takes me up on my offer to run to CVS and buy her Depends. After the third time, she comes out of the bathroom with shit streaming down her leg, and I grab nearby facial wipes and bend down to help clean her up.
“I’m sorry,” she sobs as I wipe the shit off her sandal-clad heel. She seems so shaken and broken and scared, and my brother and I embrace her, standing there in the doorway between the kitchen and the laundry room, and I feel the way I’ve often felt throughout my life: that my mother is fragile and can’t fully defend or care for herself, and it’s my job to protect her.
“It’s okay,” we tell her in unison. “You took care of us as babies,” my brother reminds her. “Now it’s our turn to take care of you.” A statement that will turn out to be so devastatingly true.
It is in that moment, having wiped shit off my mother’s leg, listening as she apologizes through her tears again and again, that I think to myself, You are not even beginning to process and understand how awful this is. But one day you will. One day you’ll return to this moment.
And now I have. Not just once, but again and again.
The image of her lying there on that sofa, so…passive. So…defeated. As if she was just allowing death to slowly take her.
The image of her sobbing in that doorway. Apologizing to us—and not just for that specific moment, some part of me knew. But for something bigger and darker that had been lying in wait for years. Something we’d just barely begun to touch.
What I didn’t know at the time but would soon learn was that she had advanced stage 4 breast cancer that had already spread to her liver, lungs, and bones. That she herself had suspected she was sick for well over a year…and had done nothing about it. Had actively hidden it. What I didn’t know at the time was that it was the last time I’d ever see her inside their house. That the next time I’d see her would be in a hospital, and then a rehab center, and finally the small pool house behind their home. The place where she’d worked from home for years, the place where she’d ultimately die.
But what I did know was that she’d been unhappy for years—even if she wouldn’t say that part out loud. What I did know was that she’d suppressed those difficult emotions deep within. What I did know was that she was dying. I felt it in my gut the moment I saw her. As sure as I’ve ever been of anything.
If I’m honest, writing about this now feels like a betrayal. Even though my mom is three months dead. In part, because it was such a mortifying moment for her. Such a messy, human experience. And my mom liked to be presentable.
But mostly because the complexities of who my mom was, and what our relationship was like, and the realities of our family system are things I’ve never felt like I could put down in words—not even as a grown up. Not even in private.
But here’s the thing: I don’t want to be stuck in a time loop. I don’t want to be trapped in the past. And I’ve seen enough time-loop shows and movies to know that means one thing: if I want to get out, if I really want to get unstuck, then I have to do the thing I’ve long avoided.
I’m going to have to write my way out, friends.
So that’s what I’m doing, or trying to do. And some of it I’ll undoubtedly share here. But some of it I may keep to myself. I’m not particularly looking forward to any of it, because it’s work. And I know from experience that work can be exhausting. But it’s also long overdue. And if I falter or feel like I’m not entitled to capturing my lived experience in words, I’ll try to remember and embody the wise words of my mom’s favorite author, Anne Lamott: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”