When Iris Yvonne Bialosky died in an assist­ed care facil­i­ty on March 29, 2020, it unleashed a tor­rent of emo­tions in her daugh­ter, Jill Bialosky. Grief, of course, but also guilt, con­fu­sion, and doubt, all of which were com­pound­ed by the arrival of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic which made it impos­si­ble for Jill to be with her moth­er as she was dying and to attend her mother’s funer­al.

Now, with a poet’s eye for detail and a novelist’s flair for sto­ry­telling, Jill presents a pro­found­ly mov­ing ele­gy unlike any oth­er. Start­ing with her mother’s end and the physical/​cognitive decline that led her to a care home, The End Is the Begin­ning explores Iris’s bat­tle with depres­sion, the tragedy of a daughter’s sui­cide, a failed sec­ond mar­riage, the death of her beloved first hus­band only five years into their young mar­riage, her joy­ful teenage years, and the trau­ma of los­ing her own moth­er at just eight years old. Com­pound­ing her chal­lenges of rais­ing four daugh­ters with­out a liveli­hood or part­ner, Iris’s life coin­cid­ed with an age of unstop­pable social change and rein­ven­tion, when the roles of wife and moth­er she was raised to inhab­it ceased to be the guar­an­tors of sta­bil­i­ty and hap­pi­ness.

As we see Iris become younger and younger, we learn how we are all the sum of our expe­ri­ences. Iris becomes a mul­ti-dimen­sion­al, fas­ci­nat­ing woman. We come to under­stand her dif­fi­cul­ties and short­com­ings, her need­i­ness and her gen­eros­i­ty, her pride and her despair. The End Is the Begin­ning is not just a fam­i­ly mem­oir, it is a brave and com­pas­sion­ate cel­e­bra­tion of a woman’s life and death and a win­dow into a daughter’s inex­tri­ca­ble bond to her mother.