In March of 2020, just about one month into the global COVID-19 pandemic, Jill Bialosky’s mother Iris passed away at the age of 86 after living for ten years with Alzheimer's disease.
Jill Bialosky documents the excruciatingly painful time in our world—and in her family’s life, as restrictions kept her from being able to fly from New York to Cleveland. She had to watch her mother’s funeral service online.
This separation mirrored the time she spent away from her mother in her final days.
Bialosky describes this painful chapter in her life in her book The End is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother.
In subsequent chapters she shares stories about her mother’s life at age 85, age 83, 78, and so on. And this reverse chronology continues. We see Iris at 43—and younger.
When Iris was 25, her husband Milt died at the very young age of 30. Iris was left with three daughters under the age of three to raise alone.
She married again and had another child—a daughter. We learn about what happened to this beloved daughter. The story is another painful chapter in the life of Iris and her other daughters.
And we continue through the chapters about the courtship between Milt and Iris, and then about Iris’s childhood. And we learn that Iris’s own mother had died when Iris was only nine years old.
There is something about this reverse chronology—this unusual structure of this book—that helps us to see Iris so closely and see her in so many stages of her life. It does something with the ways we can perceive her and get to know her. We learn about Iris’s strength and perseverance—all she endured to make a life for her daughters and herself in spite of so much strife, so many sorrows.
Bialosky, an author of five acclaimed books of poetry, has received many honors for her work. It should not be difficult to imagine that, as she said in this interview, literature has always provided touchstones for the author in answering life’s challenging questions and navigating her life and her work.
It certainly offers more access and a deeper understanding. Jill Bialosky brings us these profound and poignant stories about her mother’s life—a mother, who despite so many difficulties, lived a life worth remembering—always.
Guest: Jill Bialosky, the author of The End is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother.
