Remember when?

When you were a child, ice cream cones, after-supper bike rides, play dates and romantic dates. Christmases and birthdays, homework and housework, favorite meals and all those remarkable firsts. You hold so many memories. As in the new book, “The End is the Beginning” by Jill Bialosky, so many are lost.

She wanted to be in Cleveland, but Covid kept her in New York.

And that made Jill Bialosky feel tremendous guilt. She couldn’t quite forgive herself for not being there when her mother died, but with lockdowns and mask mandates and the unknowns of the pandemic, her presence at a vigil was nearly impossible. As it was, visitors to her mother’s bedside were restricted. Only one sister was allowed in.

She says of her mother’s death, “If I want, I can pretend it hasn’t happened… but then I’m brought back by its stark reality.”

Iris Bialosky was “never ordinary.” Widowed at an early age, she was left to raise three small daughters, pinching pennies and making do. She married again, had another daughter, then divorced and the budget stretched further. Bialosky remembers that her mother was glamorous but that she prepared carefully for dates with men, endeavors that seemed to have “a sense of desperation.” She thinks her mother had depression at various times in her adulthood.

Yes, the two of them argued sometimes, but that happens between mothers and daughters. Still, Bialosky remembers it with anguish — especially after Iris was diagnosed with dementia.

Slowly, the carefully-curated possessions Iris owned were dispersed or lost, and so was much of her memory. Bialosky was able to travel early in her mother’s “slow dying,” but Covid arrived as Iris grew fragile.

“I’m not afraid for my mother,” she said looking back at Iris’s decline and death. “But I’m afraid of who I will be without her.”

Hold “The End is the Beginning” in your hand for just a minute and you might imagine a near-palpable throb of ache from it. Yes, this is a beautiful book but man, it hurts.

Crack it open, and you’ll also notice lyricism inside the narrative, which rings true because author Jill Bialosky is a poet. Indeed, the words here are lovely and gracious, as elegant as their subject apparently was but sometimes they’re also regretful, with barely a shred of self-forgiveness. That only contributes to the pangs.

And yet, for daughters with unconventional mothers, the stories inside this book are familiar and compelling. Readers get a chance to know Bialosky’s mother, her flaws and strengths through a backwards lens of time which is both warm and tedious: we get to know Bialosky, too, in the first half, and it’s wonderful. Later chapters, those without her, are less irresistible but not unreadable.

Have tissues close, if you read this book, and be warned: you’ll enjoy it but it might hurt your heart — especially if you’re a caretaker, elder, memory care staff, death doula, or someone’s child. For you, “The End is the Beginning” is a book you’ll never forget.

“The End is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother” by Jill Bialosky
c.2025, Washington Square Press
$28.99
262 pages