Saint, Hyacinthe - 4 August — In his new memoir My Mother, My Love, My Child, Gilles Chagnon offers a deeply personal account of his mother’s final days and the journey of mourning that followed.
A heartfelt and elegantly composed, the book traces the last chapter of Pauline Daigle’s life as seen through the eyes of her son, a psychiatrist and writer who finds, in language, a way to stay close as she begins to slip away.
Written with emotional clarity and literary grace, My Mother, My Love, My Child explores what it means to accompany someone you love through the dying process. At the same time, it reflects on memory, childhood, and the small rituals that shape how we hold onto someone after they’re gone. The narrative loops and returns, much like memory itself, lingering on details both ordinary and profound: a shared meal, a scent, a whispered goodbye.
Rather than offering answers, the book listens to silence, to breath, to the rhythms of grief as they unfold minute by minute. In doing so, it transforms the experience of loss into something luminous: not a resolution, but a form of presence. For Chagnon, writing became a quiet refusal to let death have the final word. Each page serves as a testament to a mother’s beauty, strength, and complexity.
My Mother, My Love, My Child is now available in print and digital editions on Amazon.
About The Author
Born in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Gilles Chagnon studied literature before turning to medicine and psychiatry. As a clinical professor and psychoanalyst, he spent decades listening to others make sense of their lives. Through his literary work, he brings that same attentiveness to the page. His writing, shaped by a lifelong interest in memory, explores how we carry those we love—and how they continue to live within us.