{"id":734,"date":"2011-11-03T07:46:11","date_gmt":"2011-11-03T14:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/?p=734"},"modified":"2011-11-03T17:30:09","modified_gmt":"2011-11-04T00:30:09","slug":"it-wasnt-supposed-to-be-like-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2011\/life\/it-wasnt-supposed-to-be-like-that\/","title":{"rendered":"It Wasn’t Supposed To Be Like That"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Eudokia (Dolly) Klewchuk<\/p><\/div>\n

I have this void in my life right now. My mother passed away on Oct. 27th<\/sup> at the age of 96. I had a habit of calling her twice a day, and visiting her four times a year. I live on the west coast of Canada, she lived in the middle. It wasn\u2019t supposed to be like that.<\/p>\n

I had moved out to B.C. with my husband and two children in 1979, thinking my mom and dad would follow. Who wouldn\u2019t want to leave the frigid cold of Winnipeg winters for the nirvana found in Vancouver? \u00a0Well, she didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

So, for all these years, I struggled with the fact our family was scattered. There continued to be a lot of coaxing, a lot of pleading, a lot of bargaining, but she was stubborn. There were many excuses as to why it wasn\u2019t a good idea for her and Dad to move. \u201cWho will take care of the graves?\u201d\u00a0 That was a big one. Mom had bought a family plot in Brookside cemetery on the \"\"<\/a>outskirts of Winnipeg, where her three brothers were buried, a sister-in-law, her mother, mother-in-law, father-in-law, cousin and best friends. Every year, on one on my visits, we\u2019d go out to the cemetery\u00a0 and meet the priest who blessed the graves. She never forgot. This past year, during many phone calls, she\u2019d tell me we had to go on my next visit and I had to remind her that we had already gone, right after Easter.<\/p>\n

But that wasn\u2019t the only excuse she gave for not moving. She worried that she might die and her body wouldn\u2019t make it back. She told me of a friend who moved west, and despite her wishes to be buried back in Winnipeg, the family buried her in Vancouver. And then, there was the time, she saw a body (in a box) being carried along on a conveyor belt in the baggage section of the airport terminal. She didn\u2019t want that, either. And she kept insisting it would cost too much to send her body back for burial. She\u2019d heard a quote of $20,000 and when I tried to correct that misconception, she wouldn\u2019t let go of that figure. And then, there was the weather. \u201cIt rains all the time,\u201d she said. \u201cI have arthritis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or the other one was, \u201cYou\u2019re never home.\u201d It\u2019s true, we travel a lot, with her in Winnipeg and a daughter with family in Toronto. But I tried to tell her, I\u2019d be home more if I wasn\u2019t traveling to Winnipeg four times a year, and if I was elsewhere, my other daughter here in B.C. would make sure she was okay.<\/p>\n

And the last one was, \u201cI\u2019d be cooking all the time, making borscht and perogis.\u201d\u00a0 No one expected her to and no matter how hard I\u2019d try to convince her, there was no convincing. She \u00a0was built that way\u2014hard working and a fantastic cook and baker. In her early years, she and dad would bring care packages to B.C. \u2013 a box full of perogis she\u2019d made, borscht, holupchis (cabbage rolls) and anything else she could stuff in.<\/p>\n

After my father had died in 1985, she found companionship with a man from her village in the Ukraine. It wasn\u2019t until he died over a year ago, that she began to regret she hadn\u2019t moved.<\/p>\n

What she left behind is so huge, there is no measure. She gave gifts of food and money–her\u00a0\u00a0 generosity had no bounds–but it was her love of family I’ll miss the most, always asking about each and everyone during every phone call. I was fortunate to have her as long as I did. Though there’s an emptiness now, I\u2019ve been blessed with that love, and there is much to celebrate. \u00a0I will cling to memories and weave her wonderful stories together into a book–stories of my grandmother\u2019s journey from the time of my mother\u2019s birth in Ukraine in 1915 until they arrived in Canada in 1929. My tentative title for her memoir is No Time For Tears. <\/em>You can believe, I\u2019ll have many while I\u2019m writing it all out.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have this void in my life right now. My mother passed away on Oct. 27th at the age of 96. I had a habit of calling her twice a… <\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[88],"tags":[200,197,199,201,36,196,198,27,5],"class_list":["post-734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-cemetery","tag-died","tag-famiily","tag-love","tag-memoir","tag-mother","tag-passing","tag-stories","tag-writing-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LuVB-bQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1343,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2013\/life\/a-generous-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":734,"position":0},"title":"A Generous Life","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"29 \u0411\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0437\u043d\u044f, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"It\u2019s been a tough week. I lost a dear cousin to cancer a week ago. It happened so fast, too fast. My earliest memories of my cousin, Nina, are of a girl with brown pigtails, herding the cows on a farm near Stonewall, Manitoba. Her two dogs dancing around her\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sunset","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/sunset-300x197.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":814,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2012\/uncategorized\/dreams-that-work-overtime\/","url_meta":{"origin":734,"position":1},"title":"Dreams That Work Overtime","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"23 \u0421\u0456\u0447\u043d\u044f, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Do you ever feel as if your life has taken a dramatic turn, as if you are part of some cosmic shift? That\u2019s the feeling I woke up with late this morning. My body felt as if I\u2019d been hit by a wall of water. My eyes were heavy and\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Writing"","block_context":{"text":"Writing","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/writing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/ba.jpg?fit=900%2C1016&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/ba.jpg?fit=900%2C1016&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/ba.jpg?fit=900%2C1016&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/ba.jpg?fit=900%2C1016&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2967,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2016\/uncategorized\/memories-of-christmases-past\/","url_meta":{"origin":734,"position":2},"title":"Memories of Christmases Past","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"15 \u0413\u0440\u0443\u0434\u043d\u044f, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A Little Nostalgia I'm feeling nostalgic. Memories of Christmases past are flooding back. My mother gave me the most memorable one when I was five. I first posted a version of this story in 2011. Here it is again, this time revised. A Christmas Tree That Almost Wasn't It was\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"memories of christmases past","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/P1020986.jpg?fit=811%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/P1020986.jpg?fit=811%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/P1020986.jpg?fit=811%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/P1020986.jpg?fit=811%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1102,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2012\/writing\/writing-family-history\/","url_meta":{"origin":734,"position":3},"title":"Writing Family History","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"5 \u0416\u043e\u0432\u0442\u043d\u044f, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u2019m back to working on my baba\u2019s \u00a0story, NO TIME FOR TEARS, which is essentially an immigrant\u2019s story. \u00a0It\u2019ll be published as a novel, as I\u2019ve had to do a lot of research to fill in the blanks. \u00a0Because she lived behind the Iron Curtain, in Eastern Europe, information has\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/P1090283-300x297.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":883,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2012\/uncategorized\/a-korean-novel-shines-a-spotlight-on-mothers-everywhere\/","url_meta":{"origin":734,"position":4},"title":"A Korean Novel Illuminates Mothers Everywhere","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"16 \u0411\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0437\u043d\u044f, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It\u2019s still a few months away from Mother\u2019s Day, the day we publicly\u00a0honour our mothers. 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