As a card holding member of the Dead Mom Club for over 21 years, this memoir shares Nissel’s grief journey in touching and also hilarious ways. Nissel is such a gifted writer that she is able to share a difficult and sad transition with clarity and candor but also humor.

The memoir recounts Nissel’s experience as a caretaker for her mother during her final stages of her battle with cancer and her goal to offer her mother a good death experience. I often found myself laughing and crying. It was a healing read in that it holds space for both the gratitude of having the privilege to be an end of life caregiver while grieving the loss of a mother.

The chapters read as vignettes that allow for breaks from emotional overwhelm but also quickens the pace of the book. This was a funny, somewhat lighthearted read about an extremely heavy topic, which expands the restrictions on what grief writing looks like and I welcome the change.

This book is a very interesting take on dealing with death, before and after. Grieving a loved one especially a parent is difficult but this book does put some of it into perspective. I enjoyed the book and the authors way of dealing with her mother’s decline from cancer, as my own father recently passed as well. Thank you NetGalley for this wonderful ARC.

Angela Nissel, previously known for _The Broke Diaries_, brings her self-reflection to the subject of her mother's swift decline and death from breast cancer, now some years ago. It's a difficult story to which she brings a good deal of thoughtfulness and humor to her reflections on her mother's experience both as a cancer patient and as a Black woman and on her own experience as a caretaker and then a mourner (that her mother ultimately dies is no secret, as it is in the very title). The book is engaging enough and a fairly quick read, and it will be particularly valuable to those who have dealt with similar experiences of caretaking and loss, but the window into this experience is valuable even for those who have not yet been forced to share something similar.