Stella, the Star in Our Lives

Stella — The Girl She Was

by Marcella J. Damigos Molnar

Stella Michael Costuros was born on March 21, 1922 — the first day of spring — a tiny seven‑month baby who arrived early but determined, barely four pounds and already fighting to stay in the world. She and her twin brother, George Michael, were the second-born children of their mother’s second family, part of a large, blended Greek household where music, work, and survival shaped daily life.

Her mother, Eleftheria — “liberty” in Greek — was a seamstress with an operatic singing voice. In the evenings, she played the guitar, filling the home with melodies that drifted through the rooms like a second language. The children gathered around her, harmonizing, learning the old songs from the old country. Her father, Michael, worked as a cook, and the smell of food and the sound of music became the backdrop of Stella’s childhood.

From the beginning, Stella had a voice that didn’t match her size — a clear, high soprano that lifted effortlessly above the others. She loved to sing. She loved beauty. She loved color and fabric and the idea of creating something lovely, which drew her toward fashion design in high school. In choir, her voice stood out; in art class, her imagination did.

She and her twin brother shared a gentle, lifelong bond — a quiet closeness that came from entering the world together. In a house full of siblings, they were each other’s constant. 

When she was ten, she stood in a park in Minnesota singing “Indian Love Call,” her voice carrying farther than she realized. A man approached her mother and said she should be taken to Hollywood. Stella didn’t understand the weight of that moment, but she remembered the feeling — that someone saw something in her.

When she was fourteen, the family moved from Minnesota to San Pedro, California. The ocean air, the Greek community, and the bustle of the port city became the landscape of her teenage years. She graduated from San Pedro High School in the winter of 1941, a young woman with dark curly hair, dark eyes, and a softness that people noticed even if she didn’t.

She was baptized in the Greek Orthodox church as a baby, and faith threaded quietly through her life from the beginning. Even as a girl, she dreamed of becoming a nun or a missionary — not out of severity, but out of a longing to be part of something pure and meaningful.

She didn’t work outside the home — she helped her mother, kept the house, and lived the simple, sheltered life expected of a young Greek daughter. But inside her was a quiet longing, a sense of not quite seeing in herself what others would one day see, and a feeling that something — or someone — was waiting for her.

She didn’t know that her life was about to change.
She didn’t know that love was already circling her.
She didn’t know that destiny had already begun to move.

She was simply Stella — musical, gentle, dreamy, hopeful — standing on the edge of the story that would define her.

At the end of her girlhood story, there is the portrait Amelia painted of her — the older half‑sister born in 1915, the one who carried a steady, almost motherly presence throughout her life. Amelia had known her from the very beginning, had watched her grow from a tiny preemie into a young woman finding her way. In her brushstrokes, you can feel that tenderness — a sister’s recognition, a quiet guardianship that never really left her. It is the perfect place to pause her story: the girl she was, captured by the sister who saw her with both memory and love.

Chapter 2 — The Spark

How Love First Found Her

Stella didn’t know that her life was about to change. She didn’t know that the quiet longing she carried — the sense that something was waiting for her — was about to take shape most unexpectedly.

It began in the fall of 1941, in San Pedro, when she was nineteen.

One evening, she chaperoned her sister and her sister’s boyfriend to the movies. It was nothing special, just a night out, a chance to escape into a story on the screen. As they stepped out into the cool night air, Stella noticed a handsome, well‑dressed man standing alone outside the theater, leaning against a lightpost with a cigarette in his hand.

There was something about him — the way the streetlights caught his face, the way he held himself, the way he seemed both present and far away. She found herself staring without meaning to. Her sister nudged her sharply, whispering that it was rude, but Stella couldn’t help it. Something in her recognized him, though she didn’t know why.

A few weeks later, she saw him again — a different theater this time. He was walking up the aisle, alone, with that same quiet intensity. Once again, her sister scolded her for staring and accused her of being flirtatious. As they started to drive away, Stella didn’t notice at first, but her sister did.

“He’s coming after us,” she hissed.

As they pulled away, the young man ran — actually ran — after them, chasing the car for two blocks before giving up. Stella didn’t know his name. She didn’t know he was Greek. She didn’t know he would one day be her husband. She only knew that something had stirred inside her, something she couldn’t explain.

Later, she remembered a dream she’d had not long before that night — a dream she had quietly shared with her own mother. In it, she saw a handsome man leaning against a telephone pole, smoking, watching her with a quiet confidence. When she saw the man at the theater, she felt a jolt of recognition. It was him. The man from her dream.

Months passed. Winter came. And then, in January 1942, everything changed.

There was a Greek dance in Los Angeles — a rare chance for the young people in the community to gather. Stella begged her sister to take her. She wasn’t allowed to go places alone, and her mother was strict, but her sister finally agreed to let her tag along.

Stella walked into the hall that night with no expectations. She was shy, sheltered, and unaware of her own beauty. But across the room, the young man from the theater saw her immediately.

She sat at a table, resting her elbow and placing her hand lightly against her cheek. When she glanced up, she saw him, and he was doing the exact same thing — mirroring her posture, watching her with a soft, amused expression. She looked away quickly, embarrassed, unsure what to make of it.

Moments later, he crossed the room and asked her to dance. She was stunned. There were so many beautiful girls there — confident, outgoing, stylish. She never imagined he would choose her. But he did. And when she stood to dance with him, something in her shifted. Something opened.

She didn’t know his name yet, or that he had been searching for her since the night at the theater. She couldn’t have imagined that he would walk up and down her street for days, asking neighbors if they knew where she lived. She had no way of knowing that this quiet, persistent young man would become the great love of her life.

All she knew was that when he held out his hand, she took it.

And in that moment — simple, unplanned, electric — the spark that had been circling her for months finally caught fire.

Chapter 3 — The Courtship

When Destiny Became Determination

After the dance, Stella floated home with her head in the stars. She could barely recall the words they had spoken outside of exchanging names. She didn’t know where he lived, didn’t know anything about him except the way he made her feel — seen, chosen, awakened. She tried to tuck the moment away, to tell herself it was nothing, but something inside her had changed. Something had begun. What she didn’t know was that for him, the beginning had happened long before.

She was cautious. When he asked where she lived, she only gave him the name of the street — not the exact address.

John had been trying to find her since the night outside the theater when he ran after the car, desperate not to let her slip away. After she shared the general location of her home, he walked those streets, stopping to ask neighbors if they knew of a Greek family in the area. He didn’t know her last name. He didn’t know her family. He only knew he had to find her.

Days passed. Then a week. Then another.

And then, one afternoon, he appeared at her door. Stella’s mother answered. She was strict, protective, and not easily impressed. John introduced himself politely, respectfully, with the confidence of a man who knew exactly what he wanted.

His name was John. He asked if Stella was home.

Her mother, cautious and protective, wasn’t about to let a 36‑year‑old man step into her daughter’s life without scrutiny. Stella, listening from the hallway, felt her heart pounding. She didn’t dare step forward. She didn’t dare breathe. Her mother turned him away.

He left — but he didn’t give up.

The details here were always vague when Stella told the story, but she admitted, almost shyly, that she began sneaking out of the house to meet John at the library. It was safe — public, quiet, respectable. And it was the only place they could talk without her mother’s watchful eyes.

On her birthday, he arrived at her house with a beautiful avocado‑green dress and a box of candy. She loved the dress and was amazed that he had chosen the exact size for her petite frame.

He was patient. Persistent. Determined.

Stella, shy as she was, found herself drawn to him in ways she didn’t understand. She had never been pursued before. She had never been the center of anyone’s attention. She had never been looked at the way he looked at her — as though she were the only person in the room.

Her mother began to soften. She thought he was respectful. Handsome. Serious. An honorable man.

One evening, after being invited to dinner, he declared his love to her mother and stated his intentions plainly. He asked for Stella’s hand in marriage. Stella fondly remembered the date as April 5, 1942.

Stella said yes — and the moment settled between them like a promise finally spoken aloud.
The courtship had begun — quiet, careful, watched from every angle — but unstoppable.
And Stella, sheltered as she was, found herself stepping into a world she had never imagined.

Chapter 4 — The Wedding

A Promise Made, A Life Begun

Stella had always imagined that when she married, it would be simple, quiet, and blessed by her church. But nothing about her love story with John unfolded the way she expected.

After accepting his proposal on April 5, 1942, the preparations began — or at least, they had a plan. Stella’s mother was relieved, even pleased. She believed John was honorable, respectful, and serious about her daughter. But the church became an obstacle.

There was no Greek Orthodox church in San Pedro, and they had hoped to be married at the beautiful Saint Sophia Cathedral in Los Angeles. But the cost of being married there was far beyond what my father could afford on his meager salary. It was a quiet humiliation — one of those moments when the church measured worthiness in dollars instead of devotion — and it left a mark that would echo long after.

So they found another way.

Stella’s mother and siblings had never seen any of the others get married; each had eloped. Her twin brother, delighted that one of his sisters would finally have a proper wedding, purchased her dress and veil. John’s youngest niece, Georgia, served as the flower girl.

John and Stella were married on Sunday, May 10, 1942 — two days before his thirty‑seventh birthday — at the old St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in San Pedro. It wasn’t the wedding Stella had imagined, but it was the wedding that belonged to them: quiet, intimate, and witnessed by the people who mattered most. Only forty‑two guests attended, a small gathering by Greek standards, but enough to fill the room with warmth.

The dinner reception was held in her mother’s home, and in true John fashion, he cooked the food himself.

He prepared the dishes with the same care he brought to everything he did — precise, generous, proud. Stella remembered the aromas, the laughter, the way he moved through the kitchen with confidence, as though feeding people was his love language, because it was.

After the ceremony, they spent a full week at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles — Stella’s dream — using it as their home base while they visited the sights of the city. They walked the pier, explored Olvera Street, and saw parts of Los Angeles that Stella had only heard about. She remembered the feeling when the taxi first pulled up to the hotel — the grandeur, the lights, the sense that the world was suddenly larger than the one she had known. He took her hand as she stepped out of the car, and in that moment, she felt herself crossing into a new life.

She was twenty.

He was thirty‑six. She had lived a sheltered life. He had lived a full one.

And yet, in that moment, they were simply two people beginning a life together — uncertain, hopeful, and bound by a love that had found them in the most unexpected ways.

Their marriage didn’t begin with a church blessing or a grand celebration. It began with determination, tenderness, and a quiet promise spoken between two souls who recognized each other long before they ever exchanged words.

It was the start of everything that would follow.

Chapter 5 — Of Hearth and Home

In borrowed rooms and shared kitchens, their life began.

“People back then didn’t need a lot,” my mother said in her video. “We had love, and that carried us through.” And in their case, it really did.

Their first year of marriage was simple and full of movement — a month living with her mother after her parents separated, then a season in Tony’s home, the brother my father had crossed an ocean to find. They didn’t measure life by square footage or possessions. They measured it by family, by laughter, by the warmth of being together.

Eventually, they found an apartment of their own — small, simple, but theirs. Later came a bigger house, the first place where my mother could stretch into her role as homemaker, where she could create the kind of warmth she longed to give her own family. She didn’t need much to make a home. A clean table, a pot on the stove, a husband who worked hard, and the belief that love was enough.

And my father did work hard.

He worked on fishing boats — she remembered the Liberty Bell by name. He cooked as a chef at The Yacht Café, after her own father had worked there. He worked at the Coney Island Café on Beacon Street. Later, he took jobs on oil tankers: the Flying Skud, the Harry Lundeberg, the Syosset, and finally the SS Eclipse, the ship he was working on when he died.

His work was the rhythm of their early life — the coming and going, the long stretches at sea, the pride he carried in providing for his family. His labor was the fire that kept their hearth warm.

And through it all, my mother remained exactly who she was: simple, sincere, full of feeling.

“Remember me in love and laughter,” my mother wrote. She didn’t want to be held in sorrow or remembered for the hurts. She wanted us to carry the joy she lived, the blessing she felt in being ours, and the love she believed God had given her when He blessed her with her own children.

My mother didn’t speak in polished sentences or poetic structure — she spoke in warmth, in instinct, in unfiltered sincerity. Her simplicity wasn’t a lack; it was her purity. It was the way she loved, the way she gave, the way she lived.

Those early years — the borrowed rooms, the shared homes, the small apartments, the big house, the long days waiting for my father to return from sea — they shaped her. They shaped all of us. They were the foundation of everything that came after.

I can’t wait to introduce you to Stella — not just the mother we knew, but the woman she was becoming. The star in our lives.

Chapter 6 — Motherhood

Where Stella became the heart of the home, and the quiet force that carried us through those years.

The daughters arrived in steady rhythm — Mary first, then two years later Irene, three years after that Nicoletta, four years later me — Marcella — and five years after that Angeline. Fifteen years of babies, nursing, bottles, diapers, and small hands tugging at her skirt. My mother nursed each of us, a devotion that shaped her days and nights for more than fifteen years. When Angie came along, the baby of the babies, she did what mothers of that era were taught to do when they needed a little extra help — she made her own feedings at home, straining evaporated milk, water, and a touch of Karo syrup through a cloth. It was the way things were done back then, long before formula lined the shelves, and she approached it with the same care she brought to everything she did for us.

With my father gone for long stretches at sea, she carried the home on her own — but she didn’t carry it alone. Before he left, he gave Mary a clear charge, the kind of responsibility he might have placed on a firstborn son if he’d had one: help your momma, and watch over your sisters. Mary took those words as law. She became a kind of surrogate father, the steady hands to my mother’s steady heart.

Irene, only two years younger, had a spirit that refused to be managed. She pushed back, challenged the order, and tested every boundary Mary tried to hold. Their closeness in age made the tension inevitable — one child carrying authority she never asked for, the other resisting a hierarchy she never agreed to. My mother held the peace between them with the same quiet strength she brought to every corner of the home.

There was a pecking order among the sisters, but it ended with me — and when Angie arrived five years later, the whole house softened. Everyone protected the baby. In those years, our home was full, loud, warm, and alive. And then there were the moments that revealed who my parents truly were.

One night, an intruder slipped into our home. My mother had fallen asleep on the sofa, as she often did when my father was away, and one of her daughters was still out. She never rested until she knew every child was safely home. She heard movement behind her, in the dining area just beyond the sofa. Half awake, she called out, “Mary, is that you?” thinking my sister had returned from a date. But something felt wrong. She reached for her glasses, turned on the light, and saw a stranger standing inside our house.

My mother — barely five feet tall, alone with her daughters, no husband home to protect her — marched straight to the front door, flung it open, pointed outside, and commanded, “Get the hell out!”

And he did.

Only after the police arrived, only after the danger had passed and her children were safe, did her body finally release what her courage had held. She fainted right there in the doorway.

My father had his own moment. One evening, while he was talking with Nicki, a peeping Tom appeared outside our picture window. He didn’t hesitate. Without alarming anyone, he quietly walked into the kitchen, grabbed the first thing at hand — a butcher knife — slipped out the back door, and chased the man down the alley. It was instinct, pure and simple. Protection was his first language. When he returned, my mother said the hair on his head was standing straight up. He snapped his fingers — a sharp, frustrated little gesture — and told her the man had gotten away. I sometimes wondered what might have happened if he had caught the man, but the truth is, his instinct to protect was all I needed to know.

Between the two of them, we grew up knowing one thing for certain: we were defended. Fiercely. Unquestionably. Without a second thought.

Stella was the heart that kept everything beating, and the quiet force that carried us through those years.

Chapter 7 — The Gathering Storm

The moment the world tilted.

Dad’s ship was scheduled to return home on October 3, 1968. On the afternoon of September 26th, at the beginning of my junior year of high school, I was walking home. We didn’t have backpacks back then, and it was several miles away, so it was always a long walk. As I turned the corner onto our street on Chestnut Ave, I noticed several cars parked in front of our house. I recognized some of them and felt a rush of excitement — we had company, and I was always excited to see my sisters when they would come home.

Holding my books and binder close against my chest, I hurried toward the house and ran up to the front door. But when my mother opened it, everything inside me shifted. Her face was red and swollen, tears streaming down her cheeks, and my sisters were standing close, holding her up. I didn’t understand instantly, but I knew — in that way a child knows — that something was terribly wrong. Then the words came: Dad is gone.

I only remember numbness, but this part of the story belongs to my mother. It would be some time before my father’s body returned from the Panama Canal. His ship had been on its way home, passing through the canal, when it happened. We were told that he was having breakfast, laughing, then rested his face on his hand, and was gone. A massive heart attack. Nothing could save him.

The days that followed were a blur. The house filled with people, food, voices, and the strange stillness that comes when grief settles into the walls. The funeral came quickly. Our priest never came to the house to offer comfort — not once.

My sister Irene had been attending a Lutheran church, and it was her pastor, Pastor Wheatly, and his sweet wife who came. I remember the spirit they brought with them — a calm, warm presence that softened the air. They sat with us, prayed with us, and invited us to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Their kindness left an imprint on me that I would never forget.

At the gravesite after the funeral, I can still see my mother standing next to Father Billiris. Before she said anything, he handed her the metal cross he had used to bless the grave. She took it gently, holding it as if it were something fragile. And then — in her soft, careful Greek — she invited him to come back to the house for lunch. I remember it vividly, as if the moment were pressed into my mind so I would never forget it. Even in her grief, she extended that invitation with grace. He never came.

All of this — the silence from the priest, the absence of comfort, the way my mother was left to navigate her grief alone with her children — planted something in me. I didn’t understand it then, but it became the beginning of my turning away from the faith I had been raised in. That part of the story belongs to me.

Chapter 8 — The Joy of Being Yia Yia

A grandson’s birth transformed their marriage and brought her into a gentler season.

Scott arrived on January 14, 1967 — the first grandchild, and after a lifetime of daughters, the first boy. He was the only grandchild my father ever lived to see, and the one who opened a completely new chapter in my mother’s life. The moment she held him, something in her shifted. She had been “Mom” for more than twenty years, but becoming “Yia Yia” was different. It was joy without fear, love without exhaustion, devotion without the daily grind. Scott didn’t just make her a grandmother; he awakened a part of her that had been waiting quietly for decades.

From the beginning, she adored him with a tenderness that felt different from the way she had mothered. With Scott, she wasn’t carrying the weight of survival or the strain of raising five daughters. She was lighter, freer, almost playful in a way we hadn’t seen in years. His presence softened her edges and gave her something to look forward to, something that belonged only to joy. And as more grandchildren came, that softness only grew — but it began with him.

As the years went on and more grandchildren arrived, she stepped into the role of Yia Yia with a fullness that surprised even us. She wasn’t performing or trying to be anything; she simply became the most natural version of herself. She laughed more easily. She played on the floor, sang little songs, and found joy in the smallest moments. Grandmotherhood didn’t just suit her — it restored her.

She had always been capable and strong, but as a grandmother, she became something softer, almost luminous. Around the grandchildren, her guard dropped in a way we rarely saw when we were young. She let herself be silly. She let herself rest. She let herself delight in them without the weight of responsibility pressing on her shoulders. With each new baby, she seemed to rediscover a part of herself she hadn’t had the freedom to express before.

And she was honored to be called Yia Yia. The name itself seemed to settle something inside her, as if it gave her permission to be softer, lighter, and more herself than she had ever been allowed to be as a young mother. She carried the word with pride — not as a title, but as a role she stepped into with her whole heart.

She rarely offered advice or told us how to raise our children. That simply wasn’t her way. But every now and then, she would share a gentle opinion — not with judgment but with curiosity or concern. I still remember her asking me, with that soft mix of pride and longing, why I was teaching the kids Spanish instead of Greek when we were homeschooling. I told her the truth: they wouldn’t use Greek anywhere, especially in California, where Spanish was the second language. She accepted that without argument, but the question itself revealed something tender — her wish that her heritage might have a place in their world. Even in those small moments, she was honored to be their Yia Yia. And the truth is, she always carried a quiet regret that she didn’t speak better Greek.

She might show her feelings on her face, but she rarely voiced them. By the time we were raising our own children, her daughters were strong‑willed, independent women, and I don’t think she ever felt confident enough to challenge us or push her opinions. She had lived too many years being dismissed or overshadowed to risk stepping into conflict. So instead, she offered her thoughts softly, almost tentatively — a raised eyebrow, a curious question, a wistful expression. It was her way of caring without overstepping, loving without intruding.

Around the grandchildren, she became almost whimsical. There was a lightness in her that surprised us — a spark we didn’t always see when we were young. She whistled again. She sang little songs under her breath. She made up little ditties on the spot, silly and sweet, just to make the children laugh. She played on the floor, clapped her hands, and delighted in their every word. Grandmotherhood didn’t just soften her; it awakened a joy that had been waiting quietly inside her for years.

And I’ve seen this same pattern in my sisters and in myself as we’ve entered Yia Yia‑hood. Something shifts in us — a loosening, a softening, a willingness to be playful in ways we never allowed ourselves when we were young mothers. It’s as if grandmotherhood unlocks a part of our hearts that had been waiting quietly for decades. Watching my mother with her grandchildren, I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was showing us the women we would one day become.

And just like her, we learned how to make each grandchild feel chosen. It wasn’t something she taught us outright; we absorbed it by watching her. She had a way of leaning in, of listening with her whole face, of making a child feel like their story, their drawing, their silly little joke was the most important thing in the room. Every grandchild walked away from her with the quiet certainty that they mattered. And now, as I watch my sisters and myself with our own grandchildren, I see that same instinct alive in us — the desire to make each little one feel seen, delighted in, and uniquely loved.

Nicholas’s memory of her captures this better than anything I could say. He remembered being twelve, standing at the top of a grassy hill, when his sixty‑something Yia Yia — sixty‑three, though he didn’t know it then — looked at him with a shy, mischievous smile and asked, “Should I do it?” She was so small then, with her petite, round figure and those short, little legs that had carried five children and a lifetime of work. But when he said yes, she surprised him by rolling all the way down that hill, laughing the whole way. To him, she wasn’t an older woman; she was pure joy, pure spark, pure Yia Yia. It was a moment so unexpected, so alive, that it stayed with him for decades.

There was another moment that captured her spirit just as clearly. She was visiting the Vaccars when they suddenly heard her calling out for help. They ran toward her in a panic, only to find her perfectly fine, standing there with a twinkle in her eye. “I just needed attention,” she said — and then she laughed, that deep, gut‑level laugh that shook her whole petite, round frame. It was the kind of laugh that came from a place of pure mischief, pure delight, the kind of laugh we didn’t hear often when we were young. But the grandchildren got to see it. They got the version of her that felt safe enough to be silly.

Looking back now, I realize those moments weren’t accidents or outliers. They were glimpses of the woman she had always been beneath the weight of responsibility — playful, tender, a little mischievous, and full of a joy she rarely let herself show. Her grandchildren got to see that side of her in ways we never fully did. And now, with most of us long settled into grandparenthood ourselves, I understand her more than ever. The spark she carried didn’t end with her. It continues through us and into the generations that follow, revealing itself in small, unexpected ways, just as it once revealed itself in her.

Chapter 9 - A Call to Come Home

The return that was never a question; it was a calling.

I didn’t recognize it at first. It began quietly, on an ordinary day, while I was driving with my mother in the passenger seat. I glanced over and noticed a small lump on the left side of her neck — something I had never seen before. When I asked her about it, she brushed it off with a soft, almost casual, “Oh, it’s just swollen glands.” She said it the way mothers do when they’re trying to protect their children from worry.

But something in me tightened. A knowing I couldn’t explain. A sense that this moment mattered, even if neither of us said another word.

In April 1997, Angie called to tell me that Mom had cancer. Her voice was steady, but I could hear the effort beneath it — that thin, careful layer people use when they’re trying to hold themselves together. She didn’t ease into it or circle around the point. She just said it, the way nurses do when clarity matters more than cushioning.

Mom had gone to the doctor. It wasn’t swollen glands. It wasn’t anything simple. It was something that needed to be taken seriously.

I remember standing there with the phone pressed to my ear, the room suddenly too quiet, too still. Angie kept talking — giving me the details, the next steps, the words she had already rehearsed — but all I could hear was the echo of that moment in the car. The lump. Her dismissal. My instinct tightening in my chest.

This was the beginning.

The shift.

The call none of us wanted, but all of us would answer.

At first, they thought it was just a rash. That was the hardest part to hear — that she had gone to the doctor before and that they had looked at her skin and apparently dismissed what they saw. Inflammatory Breast Cancer doesn’t present with a lump. There’s nothing to remove, nothing to feel for. It shows up as redness, warmth, a thickened, orange‑peel texture that can look deceptively simple. And because of that, it had been misdiagnosed. By the time they recognized it for what it was, it had already advanced. Stage 4. Words no daughter ever wants to hear. The pieces began to fit together: the lump on her neck, the swelling, the changes she had brushed aside. What I had noticed in the car was not “just swollen glands.” It was part of something far more serious, something that had been quietly progressing beneath the surface.

They started chemo immediately. By Mother’s Day, May 11, 1997, the reality of her illness was already showing. We were all gathered on the patio, eating at the long tables we’d set up for the family, when Mary called from Greece, and Mom broke down.

A few minutes later, Mom reached up and touched her hair, and a small patch came away in her hand. My journal from that week says only that her hair was coming out, but what stayed with me was what happened next — the way she tried to make light of it, even then. She pressed that little tuft between her upper lip and her nose and wiggled it like a mustache, making a silly face to coax laughter from the tables. And people did laugh, grateful for the release, grateful for her humor, grateful for her instinct to protect us from the truth, especially the grandchildren.

But for me, the moment split open.

Her hair wasn’t just hair.

It was my childhood — the soft curls I used to twirl around my fingers when I curled up beside her, the texture of safety and comfort and home. Seeing it come loose in her hand didn’t just shock my chest. It jolted through my heart, my memory, my soul — a deep, instinctive knowing that something precious was slipping away.

I couldn’t stay at the table. I slipped off the patio and went into the house, needing a moment alone, needing space to breathe, needing to let the grief come without anyone seeing it.

It was the first visible sign of how serious things really were.

Mary had only recently moved to Greece. Divorced, with her children grown, she had finally seized the chance to live in the country our father loved so fiercely — the country he had woven into us from childhood with stories, songs, and longing. Greece wasn’t an escape for her; it was a homecoming of her own, a place where she could breathe again, build a life, and step into a freedom she had earned. She had just begun to settle there, to find her rhythm, when the call came.

She flew home that Saturday. I don’t remember where she stayed that first night — I don’t recall being there — but I do know what likely happened when Mary walked into the room and saw Mom for the first time since her return. I can almost see the way Mom looked at her. Something in her shoulders softened, a small but unmistakable release, as if the weight she had been carrying alone finally shifted. Mary had always had that effect on her. There was a steadiness in her presence, a quiet authority that anchored the rest of us, and now that steadiness filled the room again. We didn’t say it out loud, but we all felt it: Mom wasn’t facing this alone anymore.

By late May, Mom was struggling with the side effects of chemo and the progression of the cancer. The shortness of breath had become constant. Her right arm was severely swollen with lymphedema, the skin stretched and oozing fluid. The congestive heart failure made even small movements feel like a climb. She was still living in the second‑floor apartment she shared with Alex, but the stairs had become impossible. She needed to be moved to a ground‑floor place, somewhere she could get in and out without gasping for air. But Alex refused. He wouldn’t leave the apartment, wouldn’t consider the stairs a problem, wouldn’t acknowledge how sick she was.

As her symptoms worsened, the situation became untenable. Alex didn’t have a car, so he couldn’t take her to the doctor’s appointments. He couldn’t manage the swelling, the medications, the emergencies. And Mom, always trying not to be a burden, tried to make do. But it was clear she couldn’t stay there. It was time for Mary to take a stand.

Mary had secured a small one‑bedroom apartment in San Clemente, California. She wasn’t working then; she couldn’t. Caring for Mom had become her full‑time life, and everything else fell away. I don’t know exactly when Mom moved in with her — the timeline blurs now — but I believe it was later, toward the end, when it became clear she could no longer stay in the second‑floor apartment with Alex. The stairs were impossible. The swelling, the shortness of breath, the heart failure — none of it could be managed there.

Mary knew it. We all did.

And even though she had only just begun building a life of her own in Greece, even though she had returned to California with no home of her own, she stepped into the role she had always carried quietly in our family. She made space for Mom in that little apartment, physically and emotionally, because she understood — perhaps before any of us — that Mom needed a place where she could be cared for, watched over, and held with the kind of steadiness Mary had always offered.

Home health care was set up in Mary’s apartment. It became the center of everything — the place where Mom could finally be cared for safely, where the nurses came, where the medications were managed, where someone was always watching her breathing, her swelling, her color. We all visited as often as we could, giving Mary a break whenever she needed one. Irene and Mark drove their motor home out from Provo, Utah. Angie came down from Bakersfield. Nicki was closest, living in Cardiff. And we were in Fallbrook, making the drive whenever we could.

There were tensions during that time — the kind that surface in families under strain — but I don’t need to recount them here. What mattered was that Mom’s care had already shifted to Mary’s apartment, where she could be watched over and tended to safely.

Alex stayed in Long Beach for as long as he could, calling for updates, but eventually the strain and the distance became too much, and he moved north to live with his daughter. By then, the center of Mom’s care — and the center of our family — was already firmly in Mary’s hands.

Halloween was approaching — never my favorite holiday — and I prayed to Heavenly Father that He would not take my mother on that day. I did not want that date to become the anniversary of her passing. Uncle George came down from San Francisco with his son Michael to be by her side. He was there when she passed. I waited near the phone, knowing the call would come. At 11:50 p.m. on October 30th, the phone rang. Mother was gone. The familiar numbness filled my body.

We weren’t able to attend the funeral. We were two hours away, and the minister set a firm time that couldn’t be changed. With young children and an elderly family member to transport, it was impossible to get there in time. It broke my heart. I had wanted to be there, to stand with my family, to honor my mother in person. Instead, I grieved from a distance, carrying the weight of that absence with me.

But we were able to go to her graveside in Palos Verdes later that day, where she was laid to rest beside my father. The boys wore yellow polo shirts and cream‑colored shorts. We brought her yellow roses — her favorite color — and Paul offered a blessing over their grave. It was simple and quiet. Standing there, I felt the weight of the day settle in — the reality that she was gone. Free from her pain and suffering, and finally reunited with her beloved John.

I never felt like I had time to grieve; life was full, and the responsibilities around me didn’t pause. But even years later, my son John said something that stayed with me: the family dynamics changed when Yia Yia died. He was right. We had long since lost the patriarch, and when my mother passed, there was no longer a matriarch to hold the center. Somehow, even in her frailty, she had kept our family unit connected. When she was gone, the shape of us changed.

She never asked to be the center of anything, yet she became the heart of our family. With her passing, the matriarchal thread that held us together was gone, but the strength she wove into each of us remained. She was our beloved mother, our Stella Star — steady, warm, and enduring — and even in her absence, her love stayed.

Mom carried her light home to Heaven — and into the arms of our father, our Babas.