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# A Parallel Track
- URL: https://thewitchwanders.com/a-parallel-track/
- Published: 2026-11-09T03:03:39.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-09T03:03:39.000Z
- Author: Megan

I was 22 when my mother died. She had been diagnosed with terminal emphysema 4.5 years prior, and given a life expectancy of about 15 years. No one had any idea she was near death when she died.

Three months prior, I had moved back down to California, intending to try again with the love of my life. For reasons, it didn't work out, but the life I was building there was my own anyway. I wrote about that side of things last winter and released the boy. Now it's time to release me.

I had a full time job, an apartment shared with two roommates (who rued the fact that I wore Carhartt jeans instead of "girly" ones 😆), friends to hang out with after work, a fun guy I was dating and plans to finish my degree at the state university in town.

Weekends were for bar hopping. One such night, I got ready, made it to the bar and had this strong urge to return home. I took a taxi back and went to bed early.

I awoke to a phone call from the EMT who had been working on my mom. There was no hope, she said. "Probably her heart."

I woke my roommates, both bleary with alcohol, and I still remember how appalled I was at the mascara stains I left with my tears on my roommate's white shirt.

This wasn't my first death, and every time the strangest details remain.

I didn't hesitate. It never even occurred to me there was another option. I bought a one-way ticket and flew home to take care of my Dad.

I'll never forget how it felt to be pulled aside for "special screening" at the airport, or the impassive face of the woman doing the deed as, with a tear-stained face, I explained that my mother had just died. It was 20 years before I flew again, so traumatized was I by that experience.

From a full life with friends, purpose and plans to rattling around an empty farmhouse while my father worked away his grief, I fell hard.

With no one to hold or comfort me as I processed the loss of the most complicated person in my life, I began seeking it through men around my Dad's age. I got engaged, then broke it off. I had an affair with a man no one could know about. I met a man on a game and flew him up to my house, an echo of the first time, when I met the California boy.

By the end of the first year, I'd moved into my own home, alone for the first time ever, began drinking heavily and then, when that didn't numb the pain enough and the panic attacks started, I added anti-depressants to the mix.

It was in this mess that I went to a friend's party and was spotted by a man who asked around after I left until a mutual friend recognized me and arranged a blind date.

We officially met on February 7, 2004\. I know because I have the receipt from the beer we bought.

And we married on May 3, 2004.

He was stoic. He needed nothing. Felt nothing. Seemed to ask for nothing.

Twenty-one years later, after hurt and babies and poverty and the loss of my health, I made it out.

One year later, I'm contemplating my life. Everything that held me to my old life has fallen away. I am staring at a clean slate. The future awaits, there is nothing but potential and a story left to write.

I think about how it feels as though that death all those years ago created a parallel instance of life for me. How every action after that was a reaction to the pain.

How a life derailed, and a new life's tracks were laid in its place.

But here I stand anew, the tracks not yet laid.

As I think back to that life, I am straddling two worlds: the ending made so many years ago and the beginning now before me.

And it seems to me that to find my way, I need to go back to the last place I chose with intention.

So this weekend I am driving 13 hours and 13 minutes away, to arrive at my destination and spend the first full day on Friday, the 13th. I chuckle at the numbers, and I wonder at the ghosts that await me.

Will I be the ghost, wandering silently through the trappings of a life left behind so long ago, dressing in black and hoping no one from The Before Time sees me?

Or will the ghosts come to me, airing their grievances and demanding my second chance?

I don't know. I only know that I must follow the calling on my heart.

And this weekend, my heart leads me back to California, to be where it ended, to say my goodbyes to the land and the haunts, and step into the beginning, again.