The day I lost my mom, my world didn’t just stop; it evaporated. I was eleven. One moment, she was tucking me into bed, smelling of lavender and warmth. The next, a siren wailed, a flurry of hurried whispers, and then… nothing. Just a gaping, frozen hole where her laughter used to be. My dad tried, bless his heart, but he was a broken man too. We moved through the motions, two ghosts haunting our own lives. Every birthday, every holiday, every school event, her absence was a physical ache. A phantom limb I constantly reached for.
How do you heal from a wound that was carved into your very soul before you even understood what a soul was? You don’t. You learn to live with the scar, an invisible map of pain that guides your every step. I built a life. A good one, some might say. I graduated, got a job, found friends. But there was always this quiet yearning, this deep-seated belief that a part of me was missing, that I’d never truly be whole.
Years passed, decades even. The sharp edges of grief dulled, but they never disappeared. They just became part of the landscape of my existence. I’d catch glimpses of women who resembled her in crowds – a certain tilt of the head, a specific way they held their coffee cup – and my heart would lurch, always a false alarm. It was an involuntary reflex, a cruel trick my brain played on my longing.
Priscilla Presley at the Governors Ball after the Academy Awards show on April 11, 1988, in Los Angeles, California | Source: Getty Images
Then, Paris. My dream trip. I’d saved for years, picturing cobblestone streets and the scent of fresh bread. I wanted to feel something new, to escape the familiar ache, even for a little while. The city was everything I imagined, a beautiful blur of history and art. I was walking down a narrow street, near a bustling market, the air alive with chatter and the aroma of roasted chestnuts. My head was down, lost in thought, when something made me look up. Just a flicker. A movement.
And then I saw her.
For a split second, my brain refused to process it. It was like looking at a ghost. Her profile. The curve of her cheekbone, the way her hair, slightly lighter now, framed her face. The elegant line of her neck. My breath hitched. No. It can’t be. It’s impossible. My heart started to hammer against my ribs, a frantic, desperate rhythm. My vision narrowed, everything else in the busy street fading into a blur. It was like a scene from a movie, slow motion, surreal.
She was walking ahead of me, maybe twenty feet. My feet moved on their own, a primal instinct taking over. I pushed through the small crowd, muttering apologies, my eyes locked on her. Every step was agony, a battle between a desperate hope and a terrifying certainty. What if I’m wrong? What if I’m losing my mind? But the closer I got, the more undeniable it became. The way she carried herself, the familiar swing of her arm as she walked. It was her. The same woman who used to read me bedtime stories, who taught me how to ride a bike, who was supposed to be in a grave back home.
Panic started to set in. My palms were sweating, my throat tight. I wanted to yell her name, but the sound was trapped, a silent scream building in my chest. What would I even say? How could this be? She died. I saw the coffin. I cried at the funeral. I mourned for decades. This couldn’t be real.
Priscilla Presley speaks during “An Evening with Priscilla Presley” at the South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa on November 15, 2024, in Las Vegas, Nevada | Source: Getty Images
She stopped by a small flower stall, her back to me. I was maybe ten feet away now, hidden slightly by a small group of tourists. I could see the texture of her coat, the way her hair fell over her shoulders. Every detail was a punch to the gut. I was shaking, tears burning my eyes, but I couldn’t look away. This was it. The moment I would confront my own resurrection, or my greatest delusion.
Then, she turned. Fully. And she smiled.
Not at me.
At a little girl. A beautiful, laughing little girl, perhaps six or seven years old, who came skipping up to her, holding a small bouquet of wildflowers. The woman – my mom – knelt down, her face lighting up with a tenderness I hadn’t seen since I was a child myself. She hugged the little girl, kissing her forehead, stroking her hair. A man, handsome and smiling, came up behind them, putting an arm around her waist. He handed her a coffee, and she leaned into him, a picture of domestic bliss.
My legs gave out. I stumbled back against a wall, the cold stone seeping into my already frozen skin. The world spun. The sounds of Paris, once vibrant, became a deafening roar in my ears. The air was sucked from my lungs.
She was alive.
She faked her death.
She built a new life. A new family. A new daughter.
And she did it all without me.
The woman who was my entire world, the one I grieved for every single day of my life, hadn’t died. She had simply… walked away. She chose to disappear, to leave an eleven-year-old child to mourn a ghost, only to build a perfectly happy, sunlit existence with another family.
My mom. My beautiful, kind, loving mom. She didn’t die. SHE ABANDONED ME.
I stood there, invisible, watching them walk away, hand in hand, a perfect, happy unit. I could feel the smile on my face, a grotesque, broken thing, as the tears finally came. Not tears of sadness, not even tears of anger. Just pure, unadulterated, soul-shattering BETRAYAL. MY WHOLE LIFE WAS A LIE. EVERYTHING I THOUGHT I KNEW WAS A SHAM. I WASN’T JUST ABANDONED; I WAS ERASED.
What Priscilla Presley would’ve looked like without her botched surgery at the same event as above | Source: Gemini
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run after them and demand answers. I wanted to shatter that perfect, fabricated world into a million pieces. But I couldn’t move. I could only watch, a silent, broken witness, as my mother, the woman I had mourned for decades, disappeared around the corner with her real family, leaving me, her first child, lost and utterly alone once more in a city of strangers. I wasn’t just losing her again. I was losing every memory, every comfort, every piece of solace I had ever found in the idea of her love. It was all a lie. ALL OF IT.
