Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: What to Do When I’m Gone
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Columbia
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
Published a quarterly magazine: http://seniorfan.com/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2017020555
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2017020555
HEADING: Hopkins, Suzy (Former Newspaper Reporter)
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PERSONAL
Children: three (including Hallie).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Former newspaper editor; former publisher of Friends & Neighbors.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Suzy Hopkins is a former newspaper editor and publisher of Friends & Neighbors, a magazine targeted at seniors living in California’s Central Sierra. She collaborated with her daughter, illustrator and writer Hallie Bateman, to produce the graphic memoir What to Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter. In the introduction, Bateman recalls the genesis of the book, describing how as early as her childhood she had “allowed myself to vividly imagine my mom’s death, to feel the pain of the moment I learned she was gone.” In her early twenties, she awoke one night with a “gut feeling of terror” at the thought of her mother’s demise.
In the New York Post, Bateman told critic Lauren Steussy, “I thought I’d be paralyzed with not knowing what to do when I couldn’t pick up the phone to call her.” The thought was equally painful for Hopkins, who said, “It had not occurred to me that I would miss out on the rest of Hallie’s life.” She went on to comment, “Mortality becomes less of an ethereal concept and more of an upcoming reality.” In the face of these feelings, mother and daughter take a deep dive into exploring how to address the pain and loss of a mother’s death. Hopkins offers advice and activities for the first day and on through the next stages of life. A sampling of the book’s chapter titles highlight the ground the two covered: from “Write My Obituary” through “Allow Me to Explain the Stuff You Found While Cleaning Out My House” and “Take a Hike” to “Take a Risk,” “Replace Me,” and “Show Compassion.” The last instruction is “Plan Your Dream Death.”
Alice Cary, writing in BookPage, observed that Hopkins has a “loving, humorous outlook” and found the book to be “filled with plenty of heartfelt wisdom and edgy humor.” On day 320, for example, Hopkins writes, “Make a list of things you hate to do. Immediately stop doing at least two of them.” Critiquing What to Do When I’m Gone at Booklist, Annie Bostrom pronounced it “thoughtful treatment of how to handle one’s own life and death” as well as the “loss of a loved one.”
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews termed What to Do When I’m Gone a “pleasant and simple book about dying that is very much about living.” Gwynedd Stuart, at Los Angeles Magazine, described the book as a “funny, pragmatic graphic guidebook that’s simultaneously deeply personal and super universal in that it chisels to the core of how complicated and wonderful mother-daughter relationships are.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Hopkins, Suzy, and Hallie Bateman, What to Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2018.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2018, Annie Bostrom, review of What to Do When I’m Gone, p. 59.
BookPage, May, 2018, Alice Cary, “A Sunday Kind of Love,” review of What to Do When I’m Gone, p. 14.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2018, review of What to Do When I’m Gone.
ONLINE
Big Cartel, https://blog.bigcartel.com/using-art-to-cope (April 9, 2018), Andy Newman, author interview.
Los Angeles Magazine, http://www.lamag.com/ (April 3, 2018), Gwynedd Stuart, “How to Prepare for Your Mom’s Death (Even if She Isn’t Dying),” review of What to Do When I’m Gone.
New York Post Online, https://nypost.com/ (May 9, 2018), Lauren Steussy, review of What to Do When I’m Gone.
How to Prepare for Your Mom’s Death (Even if She Isn’t Dying)
L.A. illustrator Hallie Bateman and her mother have created a funny, beautiful guidebook
April 3, 2018 Gwynedd Stuart Art, Books 0 Comments
On the 450th day after she passes away, journalist Suzy Hopkins has instructed her daughter, L.A.-based artist Hallie Bateman, to look in the mirror and try to see herself the way the elder woman did. “At times you will forget that you are amazing, and I hate that I’m not there to remind you,” she writes. “Because someday you will be old, and you will look back at pictures of yourself and you will see…’I was beautiful.'”
From day one to day 20,000, Hopkins’s advice to her daughter is laid out in What to Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter, a new book with words by Hopkins and illustrations by Bateman. It’s a funny, pragmatic graphic guidebook that’s simultaneously deeply personal and super universal in that it chisels to the core of how complicated and wonderful mother-daughter relationships are. Maybe your image-conscious mom would never advise that you stop shaving your legs 320 days after her death—but she’d probably be OK with it if, in her honor, you eventually quit doing something you’ve always hated doing.
HALLIE BATEMAN
“It was always a project I wanted for me,” Batemans says of the book. “Like, what if [she gets] hit by a bus and I don’t have this?!” [Once we started writing], we kind of said this feels like this might be something other people could use too.”
For the record, Bateman’s mother is not ill, terminally or otherwise. She’s a magazine editor in rural Northern California, which is where Bateman grew up as part of a a tight-knit family that talked about everything, including death. “Since both my parents are journalists,” Bateman says, “honesty and grammar were a big deal in our house.” But that didn’t stop her from waking up in a panic one night when she was in her early 20s, plagued by a “gut feeling of terror”: one day, even if that day is a long ways away, her mom is certainly going to die.
Bateman says she spent five years bugging her mom to put down on paper the advice she’ll need once her mom passes away. It took a trip to a cabin in Maine—and two subsequent trips, one to Portland and one to Big Sur—to get both women to sit down and focus on the task at hand. “The week we were in Maine, the first night we sat on this screened-in porch. I had my laptop out and we just started: ‘It’s the first day you died—what do I do?,” Bateman recalls. “I would write down everything she said, and it kind of grew and grew.”
COURTESY HALLIE BATEMAN AND BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING
While a lot of the advice Hopkins and Bateman have included in their book does focus on coping in the wake of a monumental loss—on Day 18, feel free to throw something fragile—much of it is useful wisdom for the rest of everyday life. For instance, Day 8,000’s instruction is to “redefine happiness”:
“I used to think happiness was something I would get to at some point, that one day everything would fall into place and stay there,” Hopkins writes. “I see happiness as contentment with what you’re doing right now. That may be nothing at all, or something ambitious, or something in between. It’s a sense of not wanting to be anywhere else.”
What to Do When I’m Gone is Bateman’s second book (her creative journal, Brave New Work, was published by MoMA in 2017). She says what’s excited her most about the project is bringing her mom to a bigger audience.
“People in our community love her, but that doesn’t go beyond the bounds of our community,” Bateman says. “Because I left, I write and draw for a wider audience, and I wanted to share my mom with the world. My favorite moment of everything was calling her and telling her we sold the book. It was just so fun to get to tell her that.”
Bateman and Hopkins discuss What to Do When I’m Gone on Sun., May 6, 5 p.m., at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz.
RELATED: This L.A. Illustrator Just Created the Gender-Fluid Fairy Tale We All Need
Mom shares advice with daughter for when she’s gone
By Lauren Steussy May 9, 2018 | 7:44pm
Modal Trigger
Mom shares advice with daughter for when she’s gone
Daughter Hallie Bateman (left) and mom Suzy Hopkins collaborated on a book. Hallie Bateman
On the day her mother dies, Hallie Bateman will have very clear instructions: “Make fajitas.”
And when the meal inevitably fills her up but doesn’t make her feel better, she’ll know just what to do next: “Pour yourself a stiff glass of whiskey.”
That advice comes directly from the 28-year-old’s mother, Suzy Hopkins, who’s given her daughter enough tips to fill a book. And together, they’ve written one.
“What To Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter” (Bloomsbury), features Hopkins’ instructions and Bateman’s illustrations, done while both are relatively young and healthy and can have a sense of humor about a day Bateman dreads — when her mother is no longer around.
Modal TriggerWhat To Do When I'm Gone cover
“You don’t necessarily make it to your 90s,” Hopkins, 58, tells The Post from her home in Northern California, where she published a magazine for seniors before retiring. “But if I die tomorrow, I’ll be glad I got this on paper.”
The idea started with her daughter, a freelance illustrator whose work has appeared everywhere from Buzzfeed to The New Yorker. One sleepless night some five years ago, she tried to picture what life would be like without her mom.
“I thought I’d be paralyzed with not knowing what to do when I couldn’t pick up the phone to call her,” says Bateman, who recently moved from New York City to Los Angeles. “If I just had a book of instructions that started at the moment she died, at least some of her guidance would still be with me.”
Hopkins, who has two other children, ages 26 and 30, liked the idea of leaving “something other than [money] or property” to her children. But she didn’t think about her own mortality until 2013, when she was in a car accident that left her unharmed but shaken, aware that death was no longer hypothetical.
Over a weeklong vacation in Maine, mother and daughter hunkered down to write and illustrate the book, starting with fajitas —“humor is an entryway into a difficult conversation,” Bateman says of the darkly comedic tone of the book.
On Day 2, Hopkins advises her daughter to “talk, listen and cry” with friends and family, and to “serve them tea and toast if you’re up to it.” Over the days and months, the advice toggles between the tender and the practical, whether it’s Hopkins reminding her daughter to clean her own house or not snapping at people who awkwardly express their sympathy. (“Are you my long-lost sibling? If not, you have no idea what I’m going through.”)
Modal TriggerIllustration from What to Do When I'm Gone
Bloomsbury
There’s plenty of motherly advice, too, like how to decide if it’s time to have kids, and what to do when you’re stuck in a rut at work. Hopkins even includes favorite family recipes that could help her daughter through such difficult times as a breakup: “Love can hurt,” she writes, before one such recipe. “Curry can help.”
For Hopkins, the most wrenching moment came when imagining how it would be for Bateman to mark her first, motherless birthday. “Here I am,” Hopkins wrote, “dead instead of giving you cash tucked in a greeting card with a golden retriever on the front of it … I wish I could be there.”
She says she cried writing that. “It had not occurred to me that I would miss out on the rest of Hallie’s life,” says Hopkins, now separated from Bateman’s father. “I’m not going to have that joy of being with her … Mortality becomes less of an ethereal concept and more of an upcoming reality.”
Mother and daughter say they never wanted to make a book “where you just cry” — spoiler alert: you will — but hoped instead to inspire readers to talk with their parents while they’re still around.
“Not everyone is comfortable talking about [death] at first,” Bateman says, “but if you can get over that first 30 minutes of discomfort, I think people are desperate to talk about it deep down.”
At the request of some of their readers, they’ve written a “What To Do When I’m Gone” guide, some questions parents should answer for their children:
What are you most proud of in your life?
What’s the hardest situation you’ve faced, in career, health, love or other area?
Was there a turning point when your life changed?
What family recipes have you saved?
What’s the best advice you’ve received?
Why did you choose the work you did? Was it a good choice?
What are your thoughts about death and dying? What do you think happens when you die? What do you hope happens?
If you could send me one message after you die, what would it be?
FILED UNDER BOOKS , MOTHERHOOD
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READ NEXT Why parents are ditching traditional parenting methods for...
sing Art to Cope
Andy Newman
Using Art to Cope
April 9, 2018
COMMUNITY, INTERVIEWS
“Are you with the right person?”
This is a question asked in Suzy Hopkins and Hallie Bateman’s new book, What to Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter. “Someone who listens to your problems without trying to solve them” is one way to know you’ve found the right person.
That’s what reading this book feels like.
As a child, Hallie’s fear of death nagged at her in the background. Though her mother consoled her, as she got older, she just envisioned death more clearly - in particular, the fear of losing her mother became amplified by the questions of what exactly she’d do each day after she is gone. Finally, she had an idea: Just ask.
So she asked her mother, Suzy, to write step-by-step instructions of how to cope, how to live, and how to move on after she dies, and Hallie brought the book to life with her charming illustrations. It’s available for purchase now and serves as a colorful and friendly guidebook for us all on how to keep living even after we lose someone we love.
We spoke with Suzy and Hallie about the book shortly after its release.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING ON A CREATIVE PROJECT TOGETHER?
Suzy: I found it fascinating to work with Hallie. We definitely had to navigate to a new place in terms of communication, shifting from a solely mother-daughter dynamic to colleagues. I’m a ponderer; I like to think about things for a while, weigh things up before arriving at an answer I’m satisfied with. She thinks and decides and acts more quickly. At times she was probably frustrated by my apparent indecision, which is really just a slow analytical style.
Most fascinating for me is how Hallie can quickly see how to convert a narrative passage into illustration. It seems so effortless and natural. I loved seeing each completed illustration, and how much it enhanced each segment we were working on. As a writer with only words in my creative toolkit, I’m awed by her “artist brain” and abilities.
Hallie: I think I got my work ethic from my mom - we’re both very obsessive and determined, so we had that in common as we worked. We both needed to see the book become real. But as we reached the most difficult part of the manuscript - that point where it’s not close to finished, but you’ve written enough that you don’t have tons of wiggle room any more - I really struggled to believe in the book. I doubted that people would understand, and I think that made me difficult to work with. Luckily, my mom never wavered in her belief in the book. She kept us moving forward until I got past my block.
WHAT DOES WHAT TO DO WHEN I’M GONE MEAN TO YOU?
Suzy: The book is my actual advice to all three of my children: Hallie and brothers Ben, 30, and Nick, 26. So it brings a sense of completion, that I’ve shared something important with them - a bit of myself they might otherwise never have known. And years from now, when I really am gone, I hope it provides some comfort.
It also means continuity of sorts. Much of what I’ve learned is a product of my relationship with my own mother, and being with her when she died 15 years ago at 85. She was a children’s librarian and mother of six, practical with lots of common sense and a great sense of humor, which I think skipped through to this book. So it’s meaningful in a generational way; she never had a chance to see any of Hallie’s artwork but would have so loved it and been so proud of both of us. You still want that, long after your mom is gone.
Hallie: It’s the only salve to my fear of losing my mom, although I’m still terrified of it. And besides that, it’s this wonderful thing we’ve done together while we’re both alive!
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WHAT’S SOMETHING NEW YOU LEARNED ABOUT EACH OTHER AS YOU CREATED THIS BOOK?
Suzy: I realized that Hallie is an absolutely amazing artist. I knew she was on an art path from an early age and and that she was talented. But seeing her sketch from our ideas and then work those sketches into final form gave me an even deeper appreciation for her skills and creative force.
Hallie: I don’t know if I learned anything new, exactly. I’d illustrated some excerpts from my mom’s teenage journals years ago, and I’ve always loved her writing and sense of humor so all of that was just confirmed. Generally, though, I learned that even making an entire book about losing my mom didn’t lessen my fear of it happening.
IF PEOPLE TAKE AWAY ONE THING FROM WHAT TO DO WHEN I’M GONE, WHAT DO YOU WANT THAT TO BE?
Suzy: Love is endless, unbounded by death.
Hallie: It’s worth it to fight past that little block of fear and talk about everything with those you love.
WHAT DO YOU WANT YOUR HEADSTONE TO SAY?
Suzy: The funny thing is, for the page titled “Bury Me,” I had no trouble identifying the songs I want played at my memorial service. But I spent hours trying to come up with an epitaph and just couldn’t. It’s harder than it seems. Maybe it’s fear of eternal commitment, not having the chance to rewrite if time runs out - “Loved kids, dogs, and whiskey”?
Hallie: www.halliebateman.com
You can purchase What to Do When I’m Gone wherever books are sold, including your local indepedent book store, Book Depository (UK), or Amazon. Hallie previously wrote To Be or Not to Be an Artist for Workshop.
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Print Marked Items
A Sunday kind of love
Alice Cary
BookPage.
(May 2018): p14+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Full Text:
If you're lucky, your mom will always be your moon and stars, even after she's gone. During the month of
Mother's Day, celebrate memorable moms and their adoring (and occasionally aggravating) children with
these five books.
Margaret Bragg is an extraordinary octogenarian cook from Alabama who's worn out 18 stoves and has no
use for things like mixers, blenders or measuring cups. She whoops at the term "farm-to-table," saying she
had it in her day--it was called "a flatbed truck."
Even though Margaret proclaims that "a person can't cook from a book," her Pulitzer Prize-winning son and
author of All Over but the Shoutin', Rick Bragg, decided it was high time to collect her cooking stories and
recipes in The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma's Table (Knopf, $28.95, 512 pages, ISBN
9781400040414). "I guess you would call it a food memoir," Bragg writes, "but it is really just a cookbook,
told the way we tell everything, with a certain amount of meandering."
And what marvelous meandering it is. Each chapter contains a family photo, recipes and the often
uproarious tales behind them, starting with the legendary tale of Bragg's great-grandfather Jimmy Jim, who
deserted his family after a bloody battle that may have involved a murder, but was summoned back years
later to teach Bragg's grandmother how to cook.
These stories shimmer and shine, casting a Southern spell with Bragg's gorgeous prose, while the myriad of
recipes--including Cracklin' Cornbread, Spareribs Stewed in Butter Beans and a dessert called Butter Rolls-
-are guaranteed to leave readers drooling. Each recipe includes directions like, "Turn your stove eye to
medium. My mother cooks damn near everything over medium."
The Best Cook in the World is Julia Child by way of the Hatfields and McCoys. Margaret Bragg can cook
up a storm, while Rick Bragg writes with a powerful, page-turning punch. The result is unimaginably
delectable.
A LIFE LIVED WITH FLOWERS
Academy Award-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden writes an extended love letter to her mother in The
Seasons of My Mother: A Memoir of Love, Family, and Flowers (Atria, $26, 336 pages, ISBN
9781501135705). Harden's mother, Beverly, has always been her best friend and cheerleader; she prodded
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her reluctant daughter to try out for a local production of a Neil Simon play, which turned out to be her
entree into show business.
Texas-born-and-bred Beverly married her college sweetheart at age 19 and soon had five children. As the
family of a Naval officer who was frequently away at sea, Beverly and the children traveled the world,
living in California, Maryland and Greece. "If Dad was our captain, she was our navigator," Harden writes.
When their travels brought the family to Japan, Beverly fell in love with ikebana, the ancient art of flower
arranging, which became her lifelong passion. Harden uses its imagery and philosophy to tell her mother's
story, interspersing chapters with photographs of ikebana arrangements specially created for her book. It's a
soulful tribute that's framed with sadness and loss: Harden's mother has been increasingly debilitated by
Alzheimer's since 2007.
"The details of a home are usually what fill up a mother's life," Harden notes, "but how often have her
children stopped to consider that her sacrifices are actually gifts?" With The Seasons of My Mother, Harden
lovingly shares her mother's gifts with the world.
BREATHE, THEN GRIEVE
One day, while contemplating the horror of someday losing her mom, illustrator Hallie Bateman realized
that a day-by-day book of instructions would be helpful at such an unimaginable time. Naturally, she turned
to her writer mom, Suzy Hopkins, for help. Their collaboration has resulted in an exceptional self-help
guide, What to Do When I'm Gone: A Mother's Wisdom to Her Daughter (Bloomsbury, $22, 144 pages,
ISBN 9781632869685).
Bateman and Hopkins share a loving, humorous outlook, and their graphic memoir is filled with plenty of
heartfelt wisdom and edgy humor reminiscent of Roz Chast's Can't We Talk About Something More
Pleasant? There are recipes to feed the soul (Day 1: Make fajitas.), burial instructions, tips for overcoming
grief and advice for things like marriage, divorce, childbearing and aging. For example: "Things not to
include in my obituary: Nobody but my immediate family needs to know that I made mosaic tile flower
pots, played piano badly, bought season tickets but only saw two plays a year, or cooked with the same six
ingredients for the past twenty-five years."
What can you do to help someone who's recently lost a mom? Give them a copy of What to Do When I'm
Gone.
MAKE 'EM LAUGH
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It takes real talent to be consistently funny while sharing both your worst fears and greatest dreams.
Kimberly Harrington is a mother of two who does just that with her debut collection, Amateur Hour:
Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words (Harper Perennial, $15.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9780062838742).
This always lively, sometimes sidesplitting series of short essays tackles everything from the exhausting
days of early infancy to the dread of having one's children grow up ("I worry about what I will do with that
silence when you both are grown. What will I do with that? Is it payback for me shushing you and waving
my hands at you when I was on a work call in that NO-NO-NO-OH-MY-GOD-GO-AWAY way that I
did?"). Some essays are pure satire ("What Do You Think of My Son's Senior Picture That Was Shot by
Annie Leibovitz?") while others are deadly serious ("Please Don't Get Murdered at School Today"). Many
are wonderful mixtures of both, such as the not-to-be missed "The Super Bowl of Interruptions."
Whether she's aiming for your funny bone or your heart, Harrington's takes on motherhood are spot-on.
MOTHERING MADNESS
Life doesn't always go as planned, as author Jennifer Fulwiler can tell you. "I used to be a career atheist
who never wanted a family, yet I ended up having six babies in eight years," she writes in One Beautiful
Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both
(Zondervan, $24.99, 240 pages, ISBN 9780310349747). This, coming from an introvert who "needed to
minimize having people all up in [her] face."
To add to the chaos of writing and parenting six young kids, Fulwiler hosts "The Jennifer Fulwiler Show"
on SiriusXM radio. Before the children arrived, this Wonder Woman's life had already taken a few
surprising turns--she converted to Catholicism and left her job as a computer programmer, a journey
chronicled in Something Other Than God.
Fulwiler is a likable, down-home Texan who never preaches or proselytizes. Thoughtful and funny, she
whips off lines like, "Our home life had been utterly derailed when Netflix suddenly removed Penny's
favorite show, 'Shaun the Sheep,' from its lineup. The role Shaun played in our house was similar to the role
a snake charmer might play in a cobra-infested village." The morsels of wit and wisdom Fulwiler delivers
are as delightful as fresh-baked cookies.
BY ALICE CARY
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Cary, Alice. "A Sunday kind of love." BookPage, May 2018, p. 14+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537055040/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=426f1659.
Accessed 23 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537055040
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Hopkins, Suzy: WHAT TO DO WHEN
I'M GONE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Hopkins, Suzy WHAT TO DO WHEN I'M GONE Bloomsbury (Adult Nonfiction) $22.00 4, 3 ISBN: 978-
1-63286-968-5
An illustrator daughter and her writer mother combine on a graphic volume of advice from the dead to the
living.
The introduction by Los Angeles-based Bateman (Brave New Work, 2017) suggests that she was troubled
since girlhood by fears of death and by her mother's death in particular. One night, she writes, "I allowed
myself to vividly imagine my mom's death, to feel the pain of the moment I learned she was gone." Such
intimations of mortality gave birth to this book, as the two collaborated on what advice the mother could
impart to the daughter from beyond the grave, first day by day and then proceeding through the stages of
life, when the daughter will find herself facing the same fate that she imagines for her mother. "Your
parent's death is nature's way of breaking the shocking news to you that it's your turn next," begins the
advice on Day 21, which is titled, "Take a Hike." There are many different activities suggested for
distraction in the days immediately following the death of one's mother, along with recipes (the sort that
might pass through a family) and, eventually, advice for taking stock, moving on, and maturing into a
person who will face the end of her own life. The advice is always warm and often wise, accompanied by
illustrations that often reflect a playfulness reminiscent of Roz Chast. This isn't a morbid book, nor a
particularly dark one, but a book about facing the inevitable with grace and good humor. By the time you
reach "Day 17,000: Show compassion," you realize that this life is all we have, so you might as well make
the most of it: "Be kind to yourself. No matter your age, you deserve clean clothes and a hot meal and good
company."
A pleasant and simple book about dying that is very much about living.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Hopkins, Suzy: WHAT TO DO WHEN I'M GONE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461291/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9660a039.
Accessed 23 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461291
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What to Do When I'm Gone: A Mother's
Wisdom to Her Daughter
Annie Bostrom
Booklist.
114.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2018): p59.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
What to Do When I'm Gone: A Mother's Wisdom to Her Daughter.
By Suzy Hopkins. Illus. by Hallie Bateman.
Apr. 2018.144p. Bloomsbury, $22 (9781632869685). 741.5.
Preoccupied in her early twenties with the thought of someday losing her mother, writer and artist Bateman
asked her mom to write down step-by-step instructions for Bateman to follow after her death. This resulting
book, a true collaboration, shares day-to-day advice from Hopkins, who's a writer and magazine publisher
in addition to being Bateman's mom, along with Bateman's responsive full-color illustrations. For example,
on day 320 post-mom, Hopkins writes, "Make a list of things you hate to do. Immediately stop doing at
least two of them"; the bright image opposite shows a hairy-legged Bateman happily reading on a sunny
day. On another day, Hopkins prepares her daughter for the unexpected "treasure of memories" of her she'll
be left with, while Bateman imagines this happening when "Carolina in My Mind" comes on the radio.
Readers may expect that this mother-daughter exercise is heartfelt but will probably be surprised by just
how thorough it is in its thoughtful treatment of how to handle one's own life and death in addition to the
loss of a loved one.--Annie Bostrom
YA: Teens, too, will find comfort in confronting this universal loss head-on, with humor and heart. AB.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bostrom, Annie. "What to Do When I'm Gone: A Mother's Wisdom to Her Daughter." Booklist, 1 Jan.
2018, p. 59. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525185678/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4e87bd8f. Accessed 23 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525185678
How to Prepare for Your Mom’s Death (Even if She Isn’t Dying)
L.A. illustrator Hallie Bateman and her mother have created a funny, beautiful guidebook
April 3, 2018 Gwynedd Stuart Art, Books 0 Comments
On the 450th day after she passes away, journalist Suzy Hopkins has instructed her daughter, L.A.-based artist Hallie Bateman, to look in the mirror and try to see herself the way the elder woman did. “At times you will forget that you are amazing, and I hate that I’m not there to remind you,” she writes. “Because someday you will be old, and you will look back at pictures of yourself and you will see…’I was beautiful.'”
From day one to day 20,000, Hopkins’s advice to her daughter is laid out in What to Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter, a new book with words by Hopkins and illustrations by Bateman. It’s a funny, pragmatic graphic guidebook that’s simultaneously deeply personal and super universal in that it chisels to the core of how complicated and wonderful mother-daughter relationships are. Maybe your image-conscious mom would never advise that you stop shaving your legs 320 days after her death—but she’d probably be OK with it if, in her honor, you eventually quit doing something you’ve always hated doing.
HALLIE BATEMAN
“It was always a project I wanted for me,” Batemans says of the book. “Like, what if [she gets] hit by a bus and I don’t have this?!” [Once we started writing], we kind of said this feels like this might be something other people could use too.”
For the record, Bateman’s mother is not ill, terminally or otherwise. She’s a magazine editor in rural Northern California, which is where Bateman grew up as part of a a tight-knit family that talked about everything, including death. “Since both my parents are journalists,” Bateman says, “honesty and grammar were a big deal in our house.” But that didn’t stop her from waking up in a panic one night when she was in her early 20s, plagued by a “gut feeling of terror”: one day, even if that day is a long ways away, her mom is certainly going to die.
Bateman says she spent five years bugging her mom to put down on paper the advice she’ll need once her mom passes away. It took a trip to a cabin in Maine—and two subsequent trips, one to Portland and one to Big Sur—to get both women to sit down and focus on the task at hand. “The week we were in Maine, the first night we sat on this screened-in porch. I had my laptop out and we just started: ‘It’s the first day you died—what do I do?,” Bateman recalls. “I would write down everything she said, and it kind of grew and grew.”
COURTESY HALLIE BATEMAN AND BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING
While a lot of the advice Hopkins and Bateman have included in their book does focus on coping in the wake of a monumental loss—on Day 18, feel free to throw something fragile—much of it is useful wisdom for the rest of everyday life. For instance, Day 8,000’s instruction is to “redefine happiness”:
“I used to think happiness was something I would get to at some point, that one day everything would fall into place and stay there,” Hopkins writes. “I see happiness as contentment with what you’re doing right now. That may be nothing at all, or something ambitious, or something in between. It’s a sense of not wanting to be anywhere else.”
What to Do When I’m Gone is Bateman’s second book (her creative journal, Brave New Work, was published by MoMA in 2017). She says what’s excited her most about the project is bringing her mom to a bigger audience.
“People in our community love her, but that doesn’t go beyond the bounds of our community,” Bateman says. “Because I left, I write and draw for a wider audience, and I wanted to share my mom with the world. My favorite moment of everything was calling her and telling her we sold the book. It was just so fun to get to tell her that.”
Bateman and Hopkins discuss What to Do When I’m Gone on Sun., May 6, 5 p.m., at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz.
New York Post
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LIVING
Mom shares advice with daughter for when she’s gone
By Lauren Steussy May 9, 2018 | 7:44pm
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Hallie Bateman and mom Suzy Hopkins
Daughter Hallie Bateman (left) and mom Suzy Hopkins collaborated on a book. Hallie Bateman
On the day her mother dies, Hallie Bateman will have very clear instructions: “Make fajitas.”
And when the meal inevitably fills her up but doesn’t make her feel better, she’ll know just what to do next: “Pour yourself a stiff glass of whiskey.”
That advice comes directly from the 28-year-old’s mother, Suzy Hopkins, who’s given her daughter enough tips to fill a book. And together, they’ve written one.
“What To Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter” (Bloomsbury), features Hopkins’ instructions and Bateman’s illustrations, done while both are relatively young and healthy and can have a sense of humor about a day Bateman dreads — when her mother is no longer around.
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“You don’t necessarily make it to your 90s,” Hopkins, 58, tells The Post from her home in Northern California, where she published a magazine for seniors before retiring. “But if I die tomorrow, I’ll be glad I got this on paper.”
The idea started with her daughter, a freelance illustrator whose work has appeared everywhere from Buzzfeed to The New Yorker. One sleepless night some five years ago, she tried to picture what life would be like without her mom.
“I thought I’d be paralyzed with not knowing what to do when I couldn’t pick up the phone to call her,” says Bateman, who recently moved from New York City to Los Angeles. “If I just had a book of instructions that started at the moment she died, at least some of her guidance would still be with me.”
Hopkins, who has two other children, ages 26 and 30, liked the idea of leaving “something other than [money] or property” to her children. But she didn’t think about her own mortality until 2013, when she was in a car accident that left her unharmed but shaken, aware that death was no longer hypothetical.
Over a weeklong vacation in Maine, mother and daughter hunkered down to write and illustrate the book, starting with fajitas —“humor is an entryway into a difficult conversation,” Bateman says of the darkly comedic tone of the book.
On Day 2, Hopkins advises her daughter to “talk, listen and cry” with friends and family, and to “serve them tea and toast if you’re up to it.” Over the days and months, the advice toggles between the tender and the practical, whether it’s Hopkins reminding her daughter to clean her own house or not snapping at people who awkwardly express their sympathy. (“Are you my long-lost sibling? If not, you have no idea what I’m going through.”)
Modal TriggerIllustration from What to Do When I'm Gone
Bloomsbury
There’s plenty of motherly advice, too, like how to decide if it’s time to have kids, and what to do when you’re stuck in a rut at work. Hopkins even includes favorite family recipes that could help her daughter through such difficult times as a breakup: “Love can hurt,” she writes, before one such recipe. “Curry can help.”
For Hopkins, the most wrenching moment came when imagining how it would be for Bateman to mark her first, motherless birthday. “Here I am,” Hopkins wrote, “dead instead of giving you cash tucked in a greeting card with a golden retriever on the front of it … I wish I could be there.”
She says she cried writing that. “It had not occurred to me that I would miss out on the rest of Hallie’s life,” says Hopkins, now separated from Bateman’s father. “I’m not going to have that joy of being with her … Mortality becomes less of an ethereal concept and more of an upcoming reality.”
Mother and daughter say they never wanted to make a book “where you just cry” — spoiler alert: you will — but hoped instead to inspire readers to talk with their parents while they’re still around.
“Not everyone is comfortable talking about [death] at first,” Bateman says, “but if you can get over that first 30 minutes of discomfort, I think people are desperate to talk about it deep down.”
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At the request of some of their readers, they’ve written a “What To Do When I’m Gone” guide, some questions parents should answer for their children:
What are you most proud of in your life?
What’s the hardest situation you’ve faced, in career, health, love or other area?
Was there a turning point when your life changed?
What family recipes have you saved?
What’s the best advice you’ve received?
Why did you choose the work you did? Was it a good choice?
What are your thoughts about death and dying? What do you think happens when you die? What do you hope happens?
If you could send me one message after you die, what would it be?