Books mentioned: Is Mother Dead, Will and Testament, and If Only, all by Vigdis Hjorth

After a particularly rough week—adjusting to real life after spending time in another climate and in the ocean, taking my mother to the ER on Sunday evening, the ongoing bodily pain I’m in—it was suddenly Friday. In the morning I returned to the transcription project (now in late 1997). Totally disorienting to spend so much time in my psyche at that time in my life. But I pulled away gently after two hours of reading and transcribing.

Then from about noon to 6pm, I alternately talked to my mother who was experiencing some bad medication side effects (a whole other story that is meant for elsewhere that involves all the triggering that happens when she slurs her speech and becomes mean), talked to the owner of the board and care, talked to various people at Kaiser, talked to myself, talked to numerous agencies that are supposed to help with placement in memory care facilities, and ultimately, I spoke to a hospice agency.

And now, my mother is in hospice care, without moving from her current location. The situation now feels fast and fluid.

As I was going through all of this I was also reading Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund.

In 2025 I read Hjorth’s Will and Testament, and that led me to If Only. At some point in 2025 I had borrowed Is Mother Dead, but then felt weird and superstitious about it.

I borrowed it again late last month and committed to finishing it.

As the emotional waves began crashing—my mother’s house/my childhood home was listed for sale this week, on top of everything I listed above—I was getting deeper into the book, and spinning a story about it.

I remember as a child—10? 11?— when we got the terrible news that my two-year-old nephew had died. I had just seen him the day before. We’d driven home from the San Joaquin Valley that morning, it was afternoon, and now that little boy I’d played with was…dead? My father, who had already been diagnosed with heart problems by then, had to go lie down and take some pills. I remember being driven somewhere, and as I was driven down Roscoe Blvd., I told myself If the light turns green now, my nephew won’t be dead. I repeated it silently with each streetlight. It was a practice that did not last long.

I think about this now as I tell you about how, as I read Is Mother Dead this week, I kept thinking, What if my mother dies when I finish reading this book? and then began conscientiously slowing my reading. And then sometimes speeding it up. I knew it was a negotiation based on distress, overwhelm, and some magical thinking. So I let it be and told only one person.

I finished the book yesterday. It was brilliant, I marked many pages, and some of what I marked I want to include as epigraphs in an essay I’ve been writing about mothers. My mother did not die. When I saw her yesterday, she told me of her anxiety from a dream where she had to get a job. She had several coats and suitcases and was panicking about having to figure out getting to Los Angeles to work.

I reassured her that she did not have to get a job; in fact, her only “job” is to relax. I explained that we are only going to try to make her as comfortable as possible now and for the foreseeable future, without jumping to treatments or disruptive visits to the hospital.

The library suddenly has a copy of Hjorth’s latest book Repetition available. I confess that I may throw myself into it this week.

The anniversary of my father’s passing was March 30th. My grandmother also died in spring 2011, on the day she was going to be moved to hospice care.

Here we are, in spring, and while I don’t feel like my mother is imminently going to die, she might.

I was born in the spring and I’m the only one in my family born in the spring. This spring contains so much tumult, strain, and horror. You alive out there? Here is a flower. Hope you’re reading a good book. Happy Spring.

I spoke with host Ronit Plank of the Let’s Talk Memoir podcast recently. Look for it anywhere you listen to podcasts.

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