Welcome to the comments and discussion of Chapter 4: Saying Good-Bye of the book, I’m Just A Person by Tig Notaro! Catch up on Chapter 1: Over My Mother’s Dead Body, Chapter 2: Are You My Mother, and Chapter 3: The Downfall.
Let’s get started! Chapter 4!
More and more heartbreak. I suppose with a chapter name like, “Saying Good-Bye,” I should have expected as much. I remember the day of my own mother’s death. I remember being surrounded by some of my mother’s closest friends during the weeks before, and the day of. While my mother did not suffer from dementia before her own death, the tumor growing in her brain took several months to finally end her life and the first major changes were in her short term memory. We would have similar conversations about daily events several times over.
I absolutely love Tig’s writing style. The fact that in this “Saying Good-Bye” chapter she also included details of a fight she had “a decade earlier” with her mother where she had felt “rejected and abandoned.” A mother’s death also brings about those feelings and Tig made it as easy and possible for the reader to connect with those intense sentiments, even if they haven’t experienced this before. Tig’s acceptance of her mother and her mother’s dementia helps lead us into her process of finding closure with her mother’s death. Expert storytelling.
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Thanks for joining us for Chapter 4: Saying Good-Bye of I’m Just A Person! Join in next Monday for Chapter 5: Letting Go.
If you’re just joining us, here are some logistics:
We will talk about a chapter each Monday until the book is done. Then, we’ll use one more Monday to talk about general feelings from the book and anything else you’d like to discuss. Join in, in the comments every week! At the end, we’ll have a book club discussion via video chat! Also, there will probably be spoilers. Read along with us!
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