I Travel With My Elderly Mom — Here’s What It Teaches Me About Myself, Grief, and the Passage of Time

As a kid, I never understood it when the adults around me complained about the quick passage of time. Didn’t they realize my next birthday was still eons away? Now, of course, I find myself repeating their mantra, particularly as I watch those same adults age or leave us altogether. Since losing my father and most of my aunts and uncles, I’ve longed for a way to stop the calendar from advancing on Mom, who turned 91 last spring. The only response that even comes close? Take a vacation together.

Travel teaches us as much about ourselves as the places we visit, but it’s also a kind of superpower, capable of pausing the clock for a while. Great vacations exist in a temporal netherworld, unmoored from the reality of daily life. During these interludes, there is no tomorrow to plan for or worry about — there’s just now.

Growing up, the only big trips we ever took were to Spain, where both of my parents were raised and where Mom’s family still lived. A workaholic immigrant, my father never cared much about travel, but I knew my mother felt differently. When this bright and physically active man was reduced to a housebound senior, Mom and I became his caregivers. After his passing, I saw an opportunity to broaden her horizons.

With the fog of grief still obscuring our vision, we decided to start by returning to Spain, allowing Mom to visit the family she had not seen during the many years of Dad’s illness. Although I planned the usual stops — in Madrid and the region of Galicia where my folks grew up — I also booked us a week in Bilbao, San Sebastian, and Pamplona. I wanted Mom to experience new parts of her homeland and meet some of the chefs and winemakers I had befriended through my travel writing.

As our departure date approached, I kicked into neurotic planner mode — a role I inherited from Dad, who used to do dry runs to JFK the day before a flight to assess potential construction delays on the highway. Working through my to-do list, I bought gifts for family and friends, reserved wheelchair assistance for Mom at the airport, stocked up on her meds, and neatly organized them into multi-sectional pillboxes.

While I am not what anyone would consider a Zen traveler, repetition is a great teacher, and my life as an itinerant journalist has made the logistics easier. My mother, however, was far out of her comfort zone, forcing me to temper my expectations accordingly. Even packing her suitcase stressed her out. Beyond modifying our itinerary to meet her physical needs, I also had to help her manage her anxieties.

When you are young, no one prepares you for the possibility of parenting your own parents. While some may compare it to caring for a child, there’s the added complexity of bossing around the person who made you. Anyone who has ever gone home for Thanksgiving and immediately reverted to their teenage self will understand the dynamic. Add bereavement to the mix — Dad’s absence was a presence we encountered at every turn — and I realized the extra baggage we’d be carrying would put us way over the TSA limit.

All things considered, the trip went well. Although Mom was using a cane as she battled knee pain and osteoarthritis, she was still quite mobile. In Pamplona, I introduced her to the Rodero family, whom I first met and befriended when I profiled chef Koldo Rodero for a food magazine years earlier. Whenever I returned for a visit, Koldo’s entire family made me feel like their long-lost American sister. They were just as welcoming to Mom, who nearly burst with pride — these friendships a validation of her own parenting skills and proof that her only child could navigate the world in her absence.

In 2020, just as we began contemplating the next trip, the entire planet screeched to a halt. Once the world began moving again, COVID added several new layers of stress atop the mille-feuille of tension created by traveling with an elderly parent, so I resolved to start small. In spring 2023, Mom and I headed south to Washington, D.C. for a four-day weekend, giving her the chance to finally visit the capital of her adopted country. By this point, she had been diagnosed with sleep apnea, so we packed her CPAP gear alongside other medical supplies and adjusted our itinerary to her decreased energy level. Hop-on hop-off buses were our salvation, allowing us to visit the major landmarks with ease.

Earlier this year, we agreed that a bad bout of frozen shoulder would make a long trip to Spain too much of a challenge. Since she’d been craving a beach vacation, I booked us a room at Sandals Dunn’s River in Jamaica. While it had been several decades since my last visit to an all-inclusive resort, the ease of having everything in one place made the choice a no-brainer, and the unhurried pace was exactly what the doctor ordered — for her and for me. Slowing down forced my type-A personality to find those often elusive moments of stillness. Once I stopped fighting the urge to “do,” I could finally learn to “be,” enjoying her company instead of constantly worrying five steps ahead.

I had chosen Jamaica because it’s so different from the places Mom has visited, and it didn’t disappoint. The beautiful beach, excellent coffee, spicy food, and even a few sips of rum got her out of her own head for a bit, shifting the focus away from her aches and her sadness about being there without Dad. Like the bright sun that appeared from behind the clouds on our second day, the cheerful mother I hadn’t seen in a while reemerged in full force.

Of course, life doesn’t actually stop when you’re traveling, and the same struggles you contend with at home can still rear their ugly heads. Her difficulty with lifting her arms meant that she didn’t feel safe swimming in the ocean, so we waded in only up to her knees. As she gripped my hand tightly, I stifled my own sadness in the face of her diminished capacity, while redirecting her attention to the beauty and abundance that surrounded us.

In the end, however, Mom offered me much more than I gave. As usual. A social butterfly (unlike me), her bright smile was reflected back at us in the faces of every person we met, from Tanika, who worked the breakfast buffet at the resort and hugged us tightly on our final day, to Duwaine, one of Sandals’ gardeners. When Mom spotted the young man trimming the shrubbery, she complimented his work and mentioned that she was unsure of how to prune the roses in her own front yard. Immediately, he stopped what he was doing and guided us to a flowering bush nearby, where he demonstrated exactly where to trim the plant. She beamed, basking in the respectful warmth of the exchange.

In that moment, I was suddenly 10 again, standing next to the woman who used to strike up conversations with strangers on the subway. “Mamá! You don’t know them,” I’d hiss, fearful of the crime wave that was gripping NYC back then. “They’re just human beings, Sofy,” she’d respond calmly. “You don’t have to be afraid.” It was a lesson that eventually propelled me out into the world — to travel, meet people, and share their stories with others.

And just like that, past and present converged for a spell, and the clock somehow magically stopped.