Totally Booked: LIVE! In this special episode of the podcast (in-person at the Whitby Hotel with a live audience!), Zibby chats with poet and New York Times bestselling author Jill Bialosky about her lyrical, profoundly moving new book, THE END IS THE BEGINNING. Told in reverse chronology, it traces the remarkable life of her mother, from her death during COVID back to her Depression-era childhood, exploring memory, identity, loss, and resilience. Jill opens up about losing her mother to Alzheimer’s, the pain of her sister’s suicide, the impact of an abusive stepfather, and the inherited strength passed through generations of women. With raw honesty, she shares how writing became a refuge—and a way to bring her mother back to life on the page.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Jill. 

Jill: Thank you, Zibby. Thanks so much for having me. 

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Your book. Oh my gosh. I like kept tearing up reading this.

It is so poignant. And I don't wanna scare people away by saying it's so sad because it's so beautiful. And the way we love, the way we love things that we've lost is just so moving. So talk a little bit about the book and what it's about and then I wanna read a short section of it. Oh, if it's okay. 

Jill: Great.

Thank you. I'd love to. So my book is called, the End is The Beginning and a Personal History of My Mother. And what I wanted to do in this book is tell my mother's story from the end of her life to the beginning, and what happened that really encouraged me to pursue this book was that I lost my mother during the first month of COVID.

I was in New York and my mother was in Cleveland. And of course, if you remember, there were restrictions at that time where you had to quarantine for 14 days before you could leave the state even. So I was not able to be by my mother's side when she passed away. And she had been in a care home where she was suffered for 10 years, a slow deco decline from Alzheimer's.

And I so wanted to be with her at the end. And the funeral was. I was not able to go to her funeral, which was really just a graveside because of the pandemic and the quarantines, and I witnessed it via FaceTime with my sister who lived in Cleveland. And there was something about that experience of not fully being able to process my mother's death and loss.

Inspired me to really want to write her story because she led quite a remarkable life for a woman who grew up in, she was born in 1933 to, in a very modest Jewish home. She was raised by her aunts and her father because her mother died when she was nine years old, giving birth to her brother, and her brother survived.

And so my mother was coddled by her aunts and her father who adored her. And she was really brought up to be a beautiful wife and mother. And that was her dream. And she met my father when she was 21. And in that era, she, they quickly got married and quickly had three daughters all under the age of, we're 15 months apart.

And then my father sadly died suddenly when he was 30. And my mother was 25 of a heart attack. And my mother. Her entire world was shattered because she had no livelihood. So in some ways I see my story also as a tale about the what it was like in that era for women and how difficult it was if your life suddenly became something else you were not prepared for. But I tell the story from, as I said, from the end to the beginning, and we see my mother's slow decline through her Alzheimer's and living in assisted living and then a care home. And then I go to her FaceTime burial and it progresses for through the sort of five or six pivotal periods in her life where after my father died, as women were want to do, she really wanted to meet a new man to take care of all of us, and she was very beautiful and she was brought up to. Really value that aspect of herself. And sadly, she entered a marriage that was very spontaneous.

And, they fell in love and the my step stepfather was Irish Catholic and we were Jewish and it was a very different world. And so I also write about that period of her life. And they had a, another child, another daughter. So my mother had four daughters to raise on her own. And, the marriage only lasted for five years.

And then sadly, I write about the es the wonderful periods of raising our sister Kim, because I was 10 and my other sisters were nine and 11. So she was like our baby. And some of the parts I love most about my book is the family life. And also when I narrate the story of my mother meeting my father and how in love they were, and I think you're right that my book is sad at times, but I also feel that it is such an inspiring story about love because to the very end, my mother really felt she put back on her wedding ring after her divorce from, and she changed her name back to Bialosky and she really believed that she would be reunited with my father, and that really kept her, those memories were really precious and important. Through, through tragedy also comes some kind of joy and beauty is, that's how I see it. 

Zibby: Wow. I had to read the whole book to get all those details, but that's okay.

Now everybody else has them. No I'm sorry. For some of these losses in your life, you also in the book write about your sister Kim, the youngest daughter who ended up dying by suicide. Which was so devastating. And the reaction of your mother. Oh my gosh. And you and your sisters. And it's just so heartbreaking.

And then George, your former stepfather, who was abusive and pretty just terrible. 

Jill: Yeah. 

Zibby: To all of you. And how awful that period of time was. I love how at the end you're like, and then I just figured I would just maybe Google him to find out what happened and you hadn't even known. And just how you have weathered one thing after another and your mother has too, and how you put yourself in her shoes. It's just so beautiful. 

Jill: Oh, thank you. Zibby. I, it was so interesting for me when I got to the parts in the book where I had to imagine my mother's life before I was born and of course I relied on stories and photos and things my mother told me and my relatives told me, and I did some research into the, those periods.

But it was really magical for me to see my, make my mother come alive in the book. And I recognized how much we really don't know our parents outside of. Being their daughter or their son. And one thing that I wanted to do in the book was to think about what my mother's life was like before I was born and what informed her life that she passed down to me.

And obviously the early loss of her mother was quite significant, but I really loved those last chapters I think are my favorites in the book. You had a term, 

Zibby: you had a term at the end about this that I hadn't heard before. I wanna say like reciprocal trauma, some type of no, not reciprocal. What's it called when you experience inherited trauma?

It wasn't inherited trauma that I've heard but there was another word. Anyway, it doesn't matter, but vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma, what is that? Is that a form of inherited trauma in a way? 

Jill: I think so. I definitely feel that that we inherit our parents' traumas because they're, the way that they.

Relate to everyone, to, to family, other family members is so informed by who they are. Right? And our losses do inform us. The beauty is that my mother was, she went through these terrible losses, but she was such a kind and loving and warm person. And to be able to maintain that without bitterness.

There was one period where she was a little bitter after the divorce, but that to me is a triumph. And what I feel my mother passed on to me. Yeah. 

Zibby: You also wrote just so eloquently, and it's no surprise that you are a poet, right? Because that is how this memoir reads as if it's. So lyrical and poetic every step of the way.

And when you write about how much you're missing your mom. And I can just, I just wanna read this one section because I was tearing up as I read it. Is that okay? 

Jill: Yes, please. I would love to hear someone else read it. 

Zibby: You wrote. I hear my mother's voice when I put on a sweater and feel an itch because the label is still attached.

When I scold our puppy who is barking, I hear myself say, SHA, something my mother used to say when she wanted quiet. When I set the table for a dinner party, I remember how carefully she set her own table, choosing the right tablecloth, linen, napkins, never paper. I boil noodles and when draining them, remember always to run cold water over the noodles to stop them from continuing to cook as she taught me.

Never wash your face with soap. She told me it will dry your skin. Wash your underclothes by hand. Never put them in the washing machine. When I drive in the car and hold up my hands to view my nails, I remember my mother doing the same gesture to admire her manicure. When I break suddenly and a passenger is in the seat next to me, I shoot my arm out the same way my mother used to protect me from hitting the dashboard I call my son, honey, as my mother used to call me, I remember to smile even when I'm sad. I choose kindness as my mother always did. And I imagine too that some of what she had taught me, she may have learned from her own mother, those precious nine years of her early life she had with her.

And reflect upon what I now bequeath to my own son and marvel over how we are shaped by those we love. How beautiful is that? 

Jill: Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Now I'm tearing up a little Oh, in a good way. In an appreciative way. Aw, thank you. 

Zibby: No, your relationship is so special. And of course we can all see ourselves in the passage, the things that we do that remind us of our loved ones and that once they're gone, we remember them and the gestures and the moments where we feel them coming back in a way because the imprint never leaves.

So it's just so poignant. 

Jill: Oh, thank you, Zibby. I'm glad that I did very much want my story to. To reach others that other readers could feel their own emotions and experiences. 

Zibby: I think there's this miscon misconception when a parent dies at an older age or due to Alzheimer's, a long battle or whatever, that it's okay and it's not like sad or you don't, you're not.

It's not okay to have the same sort of trauma response or, but it's so terrible, no matter when it is, not to make it sound worse, but but it's tragic. And we could, I could feel your loss in this book. So tangibly. So thank you for that. 

Jill: Thank you. And I'm sorry. No, I was so lucky to as I write in the book, the ways in which my mother did not, was not able to fulfill her.

Individual goals. I feel so lucky from her. I knew at a very young age that was very important for me to find my own way and my own livelihood. And then I found literature and poetry and my work as an editor and a writer, and I do feel that really has saved my life from. From sadness. You feel these sad emotions, but you also are deepened by them.

And I think as my mother was there's more empathy. 

Zibby: And you have the role of as editor at one publishing house, and then you write yourself, novels and memoirs and poetry and everything else. So how do you, when you're writing something so deeply personal, how do you put on the more analytic editor hat to your own work and your own family and some of the hardest moments of your life.

Jill: That's a great question. How do I do it? Writing for me is. It's like you go down a rabbit hole you tunnel in and you don't quite know what's going to surface, and it's almost like a second language to me. Maybe because I began writing when I was in college.

I, I started out as a poet and so I, I always felt that writing was a way for me to understand and express myself in a way that I couldn't really do with other people. That somehow through storytelling, through going down this rabbit hole, I always have an intention. It's not it's a blank slate.

I have an intention that I really wanted to tell my mother's story as honestly as I could, and the only way that readers would appreciate it is if I didn't sugarcoat it. So that was something that I really set out to do, and as my wonderful editor, Peter Borland, who's here today, knows it, I went through various drafts to get where I needed to be.

And then, I'm very good at compartmentalizing. I. I've been told and I think that I am. And and also I'm very good at focusing. So when I'm working on my own writing, I'm extremely focused and I really like to do it for one or two hours, and then I. Then leave it alone. And then I begin my day with the other responsibility, responsibilities of my life as an editor working with colleagues in publishing and my life as a mother and a wife and friend.

And yeah. I, for me, they all connect into one whole, in some strange way.

Zibby: One of the things that, that distinguishes this memoir from others is the fact that it is told in reverse and that your mother's life, we start at her death and end at the very beginning, although there is a short epilogue at the end as well.

And I was wondering why do that? 

Jill: Yeah. 

Zibby: Was that from the outside, from the outset? Was that your intention, or did, was it in the editing where you thought, wow, this would actually be much more powerful this way? 

Jill: Yes. I'm glad you asked that question because I've been, people have started asking me that and what I remember is that I had written some of the early, some of the chapters where I lost my mother and the funeral and some of her living in the care home. And I went to a residency for, I like to do this when I have working on a new project. And I went to the TS Elliot house in Massachusetts. And of course his books were everywhere. And so I was reading his wonderful poem, the Four Quartets, which has this refrain that keeps going about the end is the beginning and how our endings are our beginnings.

And our beginnings are our ending. And I was thinking about that with my mother's life. That it's all circular in a way. And then I decided that, why don't I try this? Let's see what happens. If I could try to tell her story from when she was. 86 years old until she was born, but just through these pivotal periods and see what would be revealed.

So it was I was interested in trying to tell a story in a way that would unfold for me in an interesting way. And I didn't know if it was gonna work and. Peter helped me 

Zibby: in parts. I think it worked. 

I'm giving you a check plus on this. 

Jill: Yes, thank you. Yes. 

Zibby: On this experiment here.

Jill: Yeah. I'm very proud of it now, I feel like it's the idea of seeing somebody disappearing through Alzheimer's and then slowly coming alive until she's, a young child just felt to me like it was the right way to tell this story. 

Zibby: The way, by the way, that you wrote about the end of her life, even the last couple decades of her life and elder care in general.

And once she moved into a home and the people that you would see waiting there with her all of that was quite poignant. You wrote that she actually had a midlife onset major depressive disorder. 

Jill: Yes. 

Zibby: And wrote through a breakdown that she had, which sort of precipitated a change of care and diagnosis.

Can you talk about that moment as well. 

Jill: Yes.

I think that what is so difficult about when a parent, or I suppose a loved one begins to lose some cognitive abilities, it's not always a parent right away. So my mother was living in Cleveland and, slowly I began to figure out that something wasn't right.

And so me and my sisters went back to Cleveland and we took her to, to the Cleveland Clinic where she underwent neurological testing and the results. And she had been experiencing depression and and then the results of that that they concluded that she had something called pseudo depression and that what she needed to do was to.

Deal with depression through medicine or through ECT. And she became resistant to medication. But what was really going on was that she was losing her way. She was losing her cognitive abilities and she, for instance, would drive, she Dr. Drove to the store millions of times and then found herself lost.

And when I came home one day, there were post-its everywhere about things for her to remember and where this was and where that was. And I was thinking, maybe that's, 'cause she's getting older. She was in her seventies, but things began to. Become more difficult. And my sister and I went to Cleveland to see her.

We did, we felt like she wasn't doing well. And when we came, ho and I write about this in my book, when she came when we came there, she really was in bed and was totally not able to get up and. We didn't know what was happening. So I called the Jewish Family Services and asked if they had a nurse that could come over and evaluate her, and this nurse came to the house and I was so grateful because she said that the minute that she saw my mother, she knew that she was experiencing dementia.

And so she told us to immediately take her to the emergency room at Lutheran Hospital, a psychiatric geriatric hospital. And then she was there for three weeks and they did all kinds of testing. And one of the ways that you can. Be diagnosed with Alzheimer's is through calcification in the brain, through MRI plus.

She did a lot of other testing. The good news was that once she was in the hospital and was being taken care of, she came to life again and the doctor told us that she was experience what they didn't see when they said that she had this pseudo depression was that the medications that she was taking were exacerbating her cognitive abilities.

She was misdiagnosed. But as I said, the me, the wonderful thing was that, at this point she could still, walk and have conversations and relate to people and she. Was ready to move into assisted living. And she, for those five years that she was in assist assisted living before more progression happened.

She was really happy and she fell in love a few times. And she loved the painting classes that they had and she would go to every lecture and it just made. Me feel so happy because I think she really wanted to be taken care of her whole life. And so now she was in this environment where she was.

Zibby: Just to end on a note that I found so beautiful is when she was thinking more and more about reuniting with your father. In the afterlife or whatever, and she was reflecting more and more on their beautiful relationship. Those short-lived, and she was beaming to you one day and just said, he chose me.

I know and that was so beautiful. 

Jill: Yeah. 

Zibby: And then you said, but mom, you chose him too. And then she like blushed and it was just this beautiful moment. 

Jill: Oh, thank you, Zibby. Thank you for ending with that. 

Zibby: Aw yeah. Thank you Jill. Thanks for coming on. 

Jill: Yes, thank you's. Great.

Zibby: Thank you. Okay. Another big round for Jill. Yay.