In this one-hour video, Kathryn Trueblood discusses her prizewinning story “Blank Spaces Black Frames,” describing the final days of her own mother who chose to end her life by VSED, Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking.
The story counts down the final days as her pioneering mother chooses how to complete her life. Having experienced a year locked in a mental institution, and gradually losing her own memory, she refused to be locked in again as would be done in memory care ward. Trueblood discusses the post-it notes her mother wrote to herself, themes of the culture of death in America, with VSED as a newer option, and the process of family grief and conflicts as she and her brother supported their mother in ending her life on her own terms.
The short story will be included in Trueblood’s upcoming book The Big Ask: A Memoir. www.kathrynTrueblood.com
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