Sy Saliba SS: We got married in, um, 68. We were poor as church mice. We celebrated our anniversary—our first month I took her to, um, a Shuler’s steakhouse, which was kind of like the ultimate eating place. We spent the, all of $12—that was our entire month’s grocery bill in those days
and we spent it all on that evening. And I mean she fretted with me all
the way home how wanton and extravagant we were to do that. So she
oscillated between guilt and a joy of life which was kind of
interesting.

Yvette Saliba (YS): Did you ever question your decision to marry mom?

SS: No. It was kind of like our spirits merged and we were kind of like
soul mates and we kind of became one.

YS: So what went through your mind then when she became sick?

SS: It was like we were in two canoes on a stream and all of a sudden
there was a split—a fork in the stream—and she took one line and I took
the other and for a long time we would paddle together, you know? We
could hold hands. Gradually the streams kind of moved away and e could
no longer hold hands but we could look at each other and talk to each
other. And then we got further and further away until we just lost each
other.

YS: As a daughter, watching her go through that…she still maintained a
sense of optimism. Was that something I guess she…put on for her
children?

SS: It was who she was. She’d find her little oasis, little things that
she could look forward to, trips or moments that she could plan to go
through the chemotherapy or to go through the bone marrow transplant.

YS: I remember when they told us that there was nothing else they could
do, we were in the hospital and I just remember coming back in the room
and just seeing you with mum and neither of your were saying anything
but you were just looking at each other for a very long time. And I
remember thinking, ‘I wonder if he told her, I wonder if he told her
that that was it.’

SS: You know, I don’t remember the sequence but what I do remember is we
never talked about what would happen. She was concerned about what would
happen to me after she died—how I would manage, how I would survive—and
she was concerned that I would always remember her and not forget and
she said that to me. And it’s hard to forget her because she sculpted a
life in you. You are her handiwork and um, whenever I look at you I
remember your mother.