Although my mother came to terms with her confusion around my Auntie Billie, namely that I was not her and that she had indeed passed away over a decade ago, a whole new and unexpected (it’s always unexpected) realization cast a pall over her days that has never completely gone away. The stroke, no matter how minor it was, had wiped out large chunks her memory, most of which had to do with her family as well as Taras her husband.

She had forgotten that they had all died. As mentioned earlier, I had persuaded her to accept Taras’ passing and then the passing of her sister Billie, but then came the realization that all her bothers and sister, and her mother, had also died. This hit her like a ton of bricks. What had gradually been a periodic time of grieving for one and then another as she had accepted the news of their deaths, hit her all at once. She had to grieve all over again for all of them at once. It shook her up. It was hard for her to deal with. Even now she will often remark that she cannot believe all her family is gone, and that she is the last one. She is the youngest child of her family, and as often must be the case, the one most often left to carry the burden of loss.

However, in the case of Taras, my stepfather, the gaps in her memory took on a whole new dimension. But more of that later.

“Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope” – Martin Luther King Jr.