In the Paris Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, I walk along a faux-cobbled street, glancing above me to a false sky with stationary clouds. Years ago, the first time I came here, the sky startled me—country girl in a big city, immersing myself in a fake Paris, flanked on either side by cafés and boutiques full of expensive souvenirs to buy and then forget in a month or a year.

Now, I’m jostled by crowds, navigating between people smoking cigarettes indoors, visibly intoxicated, seemingly unaware of my presence. In the limo on the way from the airport, the driver said, “Here for fun or work?”

“Work,” I told him.

Along the way, he said he used to run his own business. Somehow he wound up taking a short-term job as a driver, and the short-term became long-term, and months became 15 years. As we neared the hotel, he told me about his brother—the playful way they acted as if they couldn’t stand each other.

I felt compelled to tell my own story, how my brother committed suicide, how I’d never see him again except in my dreams. Though we weren’t raised with any kind of religion, I meditate every day and pray to a God of my own understanding.

“People in our lives are really precious,” I said.

When I got out of the car, my luggage in front of me, the driver placed his hand on mine. “I want to tell you something,” he said, his eyes heavy with emotion. “My mother died a year ago today. I don’t know why, but something about you being here…it makes me feel like she’s with me, now.”

“She is,” I told him, and we parted ways.

In the casino, I turn a corner and see the large sign announcing my destination: KnowledgeFest registration. I work for a company which hosts four trade shows a year for the mobile electronics industry—aftermarket car audio, safety equipment, accessories. I’m the editor-in-chief of the magazine. I navigate a busy show floor, asking vendors to tell me about the products they’re displaying. Head units, car speakers, subwoofers, truck accessories. I conduct countless interviews, photograph education sessions and write up the content post-show.

As I navigate this world of booming sound systems and dash cameras, nestled within the glitz of the Las Vegas Strip, I’m aware of the fact that much of it will be obsolete soon—in need of updates and new releases to keep up with changing technologies. I approach the registration desk, place my hand on the counter.

My co-workers—people I only see at trade shows because we live in different states—offer a quick hello, a wave, before returning to the job of sorting badges. Beside me, people wait in a long line to check in. I sense my feet on the floor, my hand on the counter’s smooth surface.

I think of the chauffeur who drove me here. I think of his mother. I think of this moment, so changeable, so temporary. How long before things change for me? How long before I, too, become obsolete?

My mother has stage four colon cancer, but I don’t know it yet. Whenever I travel, for some reason, I feel like it might be the last time, for a long time. While I’m unaware of the cancer, I am aware of an impending feeling of change—a sensation things will be different, soon.

When I was 17, a student at Tinicum Art and Science, a Buddhist high school in Pennsylvania, our yoga teacher gathered us in the dojo for twice-weekly classes. A CD player sat on the floor. She pressed a button. Soft, meditative music filled the dimly lit room.

As we sat on our yoga mats in the lotus position, she taught us a chant. She closed her eyes, her hands open on her knees, and she sang, Ganesha Charanam…Sharanam Ganesha.

Ganesha, she told us, has the power to remove obstacles. Ganesha Charanam Sharanam Ganesha. Ganesha, she said, helps us to confront fear. Ganesha Charanam Sharanam Ganesha. Ganesha, she assured us, will help us rid ourselves of negativity.

Together, we chanted. Together, we sang.

As I hurry from the training room to the show floor in the Paris Casino, I’m unaware of my mother’s cancer. I don’t know she has a tumor the size of a grapefruit lodged against her colon, perforating her bladder. I don’t know that while I’m covering my ears on the show floor—someone’s just turned up the volume on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the Precision Audio booth—my mother’s lying on the floor in her bedroom in Florida, clutching her abdomen, crying out. I don’t know any of this. When I finally find out, it’ll be over a month later, and I’ll be texting a friend about chemotherapy, telling him I’ve got to rearrange my schedule, saying, “You know what they say. Life happens when you make plans, right?”

In a sales training, one of the instructors reminds mobile electronics professionals to treat clients with respect, to observe, to listen, to ask questions. I walk to the front of the room to photograph him. At least 50 people are seated, watching, listening, some of them taking notes.

The instructor, Kevin, picks up a bottle of water to take a sip, but when he sees my camera, he stops and jokes, “Wait, let me put this down first.”

I’ve been doing this for years. At my first trade show, the editor-in-chief at the time—who I replaced upon his leaving—told me, “You have a job to do. Don’t be nervous. Just get up in their faces and take a picture.” I adopted a no-nonsense approach to collecting content. Small talk is all but erased. However, I’ve also grown to a level of comfort with people I see only four times a year, sometimes less—salespeople, technicians, business owners and teachers. I remember another show, in another city, when I sat with Kevin and his wife, Debbie, at the registration booth and told them my husband was about to leave me.

“His loss,” Debbie said.

Kevin listened, his gaze soft, his posture relaxed.

In his class, Kevin tells attendees, “It’s not about me. It’s about them. What is your body language saying?” I look back on the moment when I told him about my impending divorce. Kevin’s body language—relaxed, open. I couldn’t have been in a better place.

I hurry to the next training room, the next class, the next hour. Time speeds and soon I’m on the show floor, photographing crowds. The music blasts, the sound waves infiltrating the nerve pain in my face. I wince, lower my head.

Time to take a break.

***

I’m 17, back in yoga class. My teacher sings, Ganesha Charanam Sharanam Ganesha. Ganesha, help me remove these obstacles. Ganesha Charanam Sharanam Ganesha. Ganesha, help me confront my fear. Ganesha Charanam Sharanam Ganesha.

Together, we chant. Together, we sing.

Unless I’m at a trade show, I’m working from home, writing my articles, conducting interviews by phone. But now, here in Las Vegas, the pain of trigeminal neuralgia rises from my brain stem. On Friday afternoon, I have to leave the casino early and head back to my room to rest. On Saturday, an older man approaches the registration counter—someone I haven’t seen in several years. He tells me he had a quadruple bypass.

Years ago, I spoke to him by phone and we prayed together. I believe in the power of prayer regardless of religious affiliation, in finding the unity behind all spiritual paths. Today, I tell him about the nerve pain in my face from the trigeminal neuralgia. If I have a pain attack, I won’t be able to function. How will I travel? How will I get home? He takes my hands in his. We pray together.

“God,” he says, “please take this pain out of her body.” Our eyes are closed. We stand beneath the glitzy lights of the Paris Casino while people pass by on their way to the Horseshoe. Cigarette smoke lingers in the air.

The prayers complete, he lowers my hands and tells me a story, saying, “Several years ago, my five-year-old grandchild drowned in a bathtub.” His eyes fill with tears, his voice trembling. “Her father had a dream. She came back and said she had no pain, she could do anything.” He wipes tears from his eyes and says, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

He looks at me again. “Do you know what I learned?” he said. “Stuff doesn’t matter.”

When he heads to a training room, I stand for a while thinking about his granddaughter and his quadruple bypass. He’s right. So few things really matter—a reality I’ve learned in the face of chronic illness. Behind me, the hands of a giant clock keep moving, despite my wanting it to stop. Stuff doesn’t matter, I say to myself. Stuff doesn’t matter.

I’m in the dojo again in a lotus position, the afternoon sunlight peeking in over zafu mats, playing against the statue of Buddha on the far wall. The clock over the entrance to the dojo, a big one with a white face, ticks on and on and on.

Ganesha Charanam…Sharanam Ganesha.

Together, we chant. Together, we sing.

In my morning meditation in my hotel room, I am still. I can sense my entire body, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. I’m aware of tension, pressure in the left side of my face, a near-constant presence of pain. I want to rediscover the sensation of stillness I always had as a child, when my mind remained uncluttered by the acquired problems of adulthood.

Then it comes to me.

As I grew, I obtained self-referential stories—memories and thoughts which looked back on the times that came before. Instead of being in the moment, I grew to say, “I remember,” and “When I was a kid,” and “It’s because this happened, and that happened…” Almost without realizing it, my human body became cluttered with remembrances of the past, an instinctive “taking of accounts,” cause and effect, judgments and resolutions.

In meditation, I find a place of increased attention in which all of this evaporates. I revel in the moment, my eyes trained on the window overlooking the city. Beyond the trappings of everyday life, I discover a feeling of peace as I open my eyes and remind myself, stuff doesn’t matter.

I go back to work, back to the loud casino, back to the show floor with its demo vehicles and stereo systems. I try to maintain this sense of presence, but as quickly as I’ve grasped it, it flutters away—a thing I can feel but cannot name, an awareness I seek to recapture.

At the registration counter, a company representative asks me where I live in Florida. I tell him about my cousin Gregg, how I took care of him when he got sick, how he died and left me his house. “I still talk to him as if he never left.”

The rep nods. “I had a teacher once who told me that a person doesn’t go away. You keep that relationship alive and you move forward, but they’re still with you because you’re evolving in this life.”

“That makes sense,” I tell him. “Thank you for saying that.”

He smiles, turns to head for the show floor. “I wish you all the best in your continued relationship together.”

When I close my eyes, I can still picture Gregg sitting in his favorite spot on the loveseat, his feet up, switching channels on the television.

Ganesha Charanam…Sharanam Ganesha.

My mother has stage four colon cancer, but I don’t find this out until later. I fly home from Las Vegas. My mother—who’s constantly active, working in the garden, unable to sit still—is suddenly weak and napping all the time.

It’s always been her preference to sleep on a mat in the sunroom, never a bed or a regular mattress. That’s how I know it’s serious. One day, I find her lying on the guest bed, shivering under a blanket. For weeks, she’s refused to see a doctor. Finally, she agrees to go to the emergency room.

At the ER, we tell the nurses we think it’s her hemorrhoids—the discomfort, the difficulty on the toilet. While she lies on her side clad in hospital gown, freezing from the air conditioning, the doctor examines her. “You look fine,” she says. “I’m ordering a CT scan. We’re going to have to admit you into the hospital.”

When the CT scan comes back, the doctor wheels a computer into the room to show us the tumor—a huge, vague shape attached to the colon. “As soon as there’s a room available, transport will be here to take you up,” says the doctor, who wheels away the computer and shuts the door behind her.

I tuck my mother’s jacket around her. “I felt so weak when I tried to mow the lawn,” she says. “I kept having to lie down. I knew something was wrong.”

I sit down next to the bed. “Mama, I want you to know something. Just in case.”

“What is it?”

“Well, we’ve never had the best relationship. But I just want you to know I don’t hold anything against you and I don’t have any resentments. I know you did your best.”

Tears come to her eyes. “I can only be what I can be.”

“I know. And that’s okay.” We’re quiet for a long moment. “I just…I always wanted to take your pain away. I wish I could.” She nods. She can tell I’m talking about her childhood and the sexual abuse she endured at the hands of her father. As a result, she didn’t know how to form healthy relationships. She tried her best. “I hope I helped a little bit,” I say.

“You helped in the most humane way possible. You were always your best self. And if you weren’t yet, you focused on being your best self. That’s a big deal,” she tells me.

“Thank you, Mama. That means a lot to me.” I take a breath, trying to hold back tears.

“I live that way, too,” she says. “There’s always a choice. If something needs to get done, I’m going to do it.” She looks at me. “Don’t measure what you can do by what another person does. Just shut up and do it. Just do it because you can.”

“I feel good about our relationship, Mama. I hope you do, too.”

She nods. “I do. I do.”

***

I’m 17 again, back in the dojo, lying on my mat at the end of class, eyes closed. Shavasana, corpse pose. My teacher adjusts each student.

My home isn’t very affectionate. Mama tries her best, but she doesn’t know what healthy affection looks like, so my favorite part of the week is when my yoga teacher adjusts my arms, my legs, then my head, helping me to lengthen and stretch, leading me deeper into a moment of presence I’ll never forget.

Years later, I’ll still be able to recall these moments in which I found myself completely present, lying on my yoga mat, wrapped in the comfort and safety of the dojo at Tinicum Art and Science. Years later, I’ll realize my teacher’s touch is the soft touch of a mother, filled with a kind of vulnerable trust—the kind of touch I always wanted.

At home, we hardly ever hug each other. Mama drinks in the evening. She tucks in my little brother. We are poor. We live in a tiny apartment. Mama and I share a room where she sleeps on the floor. Together we sing a made-up song before sleep.

Have good dreams. Have good nights. And I love you and goodnight. Aum.

Om—the essence of consciousness.

Om—the Absolute.

Om—a sound which represents the divine.

When we chant this word together, I relish the moment when our voices harmonize, the tone in sync, aum like a little family, aum like the three of us finding peace, aum a way of saying, we don’t know the right way to love, but we try our best.

Ganesha Charanam Sharanam Ganesha.

Together, we chant. Together, we sing.

***

On the last day of the trade show in Las Vegas, I help close registration. I walk the wide hallway, conference rooms on either side, rooms which will soon be empty of any evidence we were ever here.

The show room floor—a huge exhibit hall—opens to my left. Double doors stand open. I watch walls come down, displays being folded into giant wooden crates, people dismantling countertops and rolling up carpeting, putting equipment into waiting boxes.

I’ve always marveled at this process. The show floor requires hours of set-up. Flashy backdrops, counters and computers, displays for speakers, DSPs and subwoofers. Lights and sound, show cars waiting with doors open, company reps ready to give demonstrations.

When I was a child, installers were still cutting holes in cars to input new speakers. Now, audio companies are trying everything they can to stay relevant in a world in which new cars come with everything already installed, ready to go. Integration is the word of the day—finding a way to fit. I think of this while I watch everything come down in minutes, a world being dismantled and stored in containers, packed onto pallets, carried out by forklift, rolled onto the backs of flatbed trucks.

While I’m watching, a company rep notices. He says hello. I nod toward the action. “I like to watch this,” I say. “There’s something about it. I feel like it’s a metaphor for the human experience—the temporary nature of everything, you know?”

He smiles, lets out a small laugh. “That’s one way of seeing it,” he tells me.

I want to tell him more. I want to tell him I’m afraid of dying, and I want to ask if he is, too. I want to tell him about my mother, how I worry for her whenever I travel.

I remember the dojo. I remember being 17. I’m 39, but I still feel like I’m 17—like nothing’s changed, and everything’s changed.

Back home, weeks later, we’ll wait for chemo to start. I’ll sit in my room and remember yoga class. I’ll remember how my teacher told us, don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Ganesha Charanam Sharanam Ganesha. Ganesha has the power to remove obstacles.

Ganesha Charanam Sharanam Ganesha. Ganesha can help us to confront fear.

Ganesha Charanam Sharanam Ganesha. Ganesha is listening. All we have to do is ask.

Together, we chant. Together, we sing.