A Son’s Quiet Tribute to His Dying Mother Becomes a Moving Portrait of Love, Memory, and Loss
In My Mother, My Love, My Child, author and psychiatrist Gilles Chagnon invites readers into an intimate, deeply human experience: accompanying a parent through the final days of life.
At the heart of this memoir is Pauline Daiglea mother, a sister, a woman shaped by strength, resilience, and a quiet grace. As her heart begins to fail, she faces death without illusion. Her son, standing beside her, begins writingnot to escape grief, but to stay close to her through it.
Chagnons story doesnt seek drama. Instead, it offers presence. The book unfolds gently, in looping reflections on how memory works: circling back, returning to details that might otherwise be lost. In these pages, the act of caregiving becomes an act of love. And grief becomes something not to fix, but to hold.
Born in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Gilles Chagnon is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and writer who has spent his life exploring the interior world. His workboth clinical and creativehas always revolved around memory: how we carry it, how it shapes us, and how it allows us to stay connected to the people we love, even after they are gone.
In writing My Mother, My Love, My Child, Chagnon offers not only a tribute to his mother, but a quiet reminder to us all: grief is not separate from lifeit is part of it. And when we take the time to listen, to remember, and to sit beside our sorrow, something luminous can emerge.
This is not a story about how to move on. It is a story about how to remain.
My Mother, My Love, My Child is available now in print and digital formats on Amazon.
About the Author
Gilles Chagnon was born and raised in Saint-Hyacinthe, in Quebecs Montrgie region. He first studied literature at the University of Montral before turning to medicine, ultimately completing his residency in psychiatry. Over the course of his career, he not only practiced as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, but also taught future clinicians as a clinical professor at the University of Montreal and the University of Sherbrooke.
For Chagnon, writing and psychoanalysis are deeply connectedboth are ways of listening, remembering, and understanding the human mind. His literary and clinical work often intersect in explorations of memory, inner life, and the subtle narratives that shape us. Through essays, fiction, and memoir, he continues to explore how rememberingrevisiting and reshaping the pasthelps each of us remain whole, even in the face of loss.
