Before and After

Nothing Prepared Me To Continue Living After Learning My Mom Has Pancreatic Cancer.

April 24, 2022. Lunch with my mom.

She says, “God gone bring me through this.”

She says, “I need you to believe as hard as I do.”

She says, “If not in God, then believe in me.”

I say, “I love you. I am not prepared to be in a world where you no longer exist.”

January 25, 2026.

What are those dates called? The ones that split reality into before and after.

Before knowing.

Before experiencing.

Before life goes to hell… wearing gasoline thongs and sitting on a cherry-red crotch rocket.

Oh, yes.

Defining Moments. Moments that so thoroughly change a person’s understanding of what is acceptable and what isn’t… they redefine life.

Life-Altering Circumstances.

Pivotal Points.

Epochal Events.

They all mean the same thing in the end.

10:34 PM.

“There is a mass on your mom’s pancreas. I’m so sorry.”

I’m one of those special people who rehearses potential conversations while looking at my crusty-eyed morning reflection. I rehearsed the conversation where one of my girls tells me they’re pregnant. The one where a literary agent finds my shit on Substack and reaches out to immediately sign me. One of my favorite ones is when I get a call from an attorney letting me know that someone left me a farm and enough money to keep my addiction to marshmallow Peeps in check.

You know what conversation I didn’t rehearse while standing in my bathroom mirror?

The one where a nice ER doctor places her cool left hand my right shoulder, sighs like she’s getting ready to sing an old, negro spiritual and says, “There is mass on your mom’s pancreas. I’m so sorry.”

January 10, 2026, My aunt’s going home celebration.

I hadn’t practiced my words.

I wasn’t sure how ugly I would look when my face crumpled in on itself.

I didn’t understand how loud the doctor’s words wouldn’t be. How they felt like expensive silk caressing the stereocilia inside my ears.

I only had the length of time it took this kind woman to say eleven words, squeeze my right shoulder—twice—and long blink to process what I heard.

“Oh.”

“We can’t tell if it’s wrapped around blood vessels…”

“Okay.”

“We will need to transfer your mom to our sister facility. They have the oncology specialists she will need there.”

“I see.”

I didn’t see shit.

Couldn’t make out my husband’s 6’4” frame sitting in the uncomfortable plastic chair stationed a few feet away from where I sagged beside Momma’s ER bed.

It’s been fifteen days.

Eleven hospital visits.

Eight rotating doctors.

An ocean of blood drawn.

MRI, PET, EKG, CT, EUS, and ERCP scans.

Visits from family I haven’t seen in years.

Too many fucking platitudes to count.

And I am proud to say…

Only one colossal what-the-fuck banshee crying jags in my car.

January 27, 2026.

My mother, Genevia, was officially diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.