Unexpectedly, just when she was doing so well, my mother died Thursday, November 27, 2025 at 11:36 in the morning. I know because her watch stopped at exactly that time two days earlier. When I say my mother I mean my sister's and my mother together. We both love her and honour her very much.
I am of course filled with guilt because the first time I walked into her room at 9:04 she said to me "Good that you are here, I think I had a heart attach, I had pain in my chest and leg or arm. Give me an aspirin". She was cold on her forehead and her face and her arms and legs. I thought it wa because when she got into bed herself she didn't cover herself completely and her feet and legs were partially uncovered. It is winter here and below zero even though her room was heated it felt cooler than normal.
Today is Saturday. I will write a full description of what led up to this but first I want to write a eulogy for my mother.
My Mother,my best friend, my buddy Zoriana Alexandra Maria Sokolsky unexpectedly passed away while trying to sleep at 11:36 in the morning on Thursday November 27, 2025. I had just bought her a new coffee cup that was blue and yellow and she loved getting up for warm coffee. Each morning when I walked into her room, I would say Good Morning Pani and she would cheerfully answer Good Morning Rostykoo or \good Morning mister or Good Morning my son and she always followed it up with "How are you?". But this Thursday, she didn't answer. She had stopped breathing just 3 or 4 minutes before I walked into the room. She was not breathing. Paramedics came withing minutes and they could not revive her. Later that day they took her to a funeral home and now today we celebrate her before her burial. My mother did not want to die. She was full of life and we sang a song together laughing before bed.
My mother Zoriana was born in 1931 in Pidhajchi, Ukraine, that is near Ternopil and Lviv where Russians just bombed and killed over 34 people who were also just sleeping peacefully. Her parents were both strong minded people.father was an advocat and a member of Parliament and her mother wanted to be a pharmacist before my grandfather said to her "Marry me or I will kill myself". Which I am glad he married her because they gave birth to my mother and eight years later to her sister Zdana, who later met a very good looking and smart man Bohdan Feduschak and they had two beautiful Ukrainian children Natalia and four years later Markian who also married and had two beautiful daughters. After a brutal time in prison and fleeing Ukraine for Germany where my mother went to school and learned to speak fluent German they got on a ship from Germany and emigrated to Canada. Actually, half of our family came to Edmonton and the other half split up and went to New York. My grandfather wanted to go to New York as well but his sponsor was in Canada so he ended up here while my grandmothers siblings ended up in the US. But, again I am glad he came here because my mother then met my father and they made two children, First me in 1953 and four years later my sister Roxana who then met and married Walter Drozdowsky and they had three beautiful strong minded daughters, Julia, Melanie and Valery.
My short point here is that as fragile and coincidental all these events were they all came together and produced many more family children and grandchildren also my mother's death was fragile.
Most of you here came in support of my mother and my sister. And we thank you deeply for coming to pay your respects and to honour my mother and support my sister and her family. Some of you may have know my mother personally through the years and some of you may have just known of her through my sister. But, I would like to honour my mother by telling you who she was.
My mother met my father, had two good passionate years together with him had two children, my sister and me, then told him to leave when I was 6 years old and then divorced him 7 years later. After working as a secretary supporting my father through his school, my mother went back to school and finished her school and University with a Bachelor degree and a Masters degree. Now my mother alone raised two children while she went to work in the day and went to night school at night. She helped her parents buy a three story house in High Park, where the three of us, my sister and I and my mother lived on the bottom floor and her parents lived on the second floor and they rented the two rooms at the top to Heinze and Gusty and their son Michael. In those days everyone was very thrifty. My mother was poor and she never forgot it. She budgeted and saved every dollar. She was determined to provide for her children so that they would not be poor like she was. This was her driving force to learn about investing early on even when she was still poor.
At University of Toronto she met a very different man, a kind respectful and studious man, Ostap Sokolsky who very much respected her and her father, my grandfather Alexander Yaworsky. When Ostap proposed to my mother, my mother came to me to ask me when I was 13 if she should accept his proposal and marry him. I said yes of course. They went to city hall and married without any fanfare and together picked out and bought a house in Scarborough. Even though the house was bought, they waited until they were officially married to move in together. Ostap later became the Director and managed the cmplete construction and later management of Sts. Peter and Paul retirement center in Scarborough. They bought a five bedroom house so that my sister and I could each have our own bedroom, hers beige and mine blue and they each had their own office and desks. There Ostap worked every night in his well stocked library which he bought one book at a time with the money he saved by quitting smoking three packs a day. They worked separately and gave each other space to pursui their own interests. Ostap was very interested in politics and in history and in Ukraine but he kept a low profile not wanting to be found by Russians.
My mother in her office workshop studied and researched her curriculum to teach her high school students. She produced many many slides of geographical rock formation. She also researched and published a paper in 1985 on "The Beginnings of he Ukrainian settlement in Toronto, 1903-14", and later a double issue in 1988. In addition to early Ukrainian settlers in Canada, her work was cited in materials form the Multiculturl Hisdtory Sciety of Ontario and in the Journal of Ukrainian Studies.
Those who knew my mother may know her as a very colourful and happy person but she was also a very dedicated focussed hard working person both in her profession as a teacher and in her academic studies as well as her focus on exploring investment in stocks. She just didn't focus much on housekeeping, which unfortunately is a trait that I picked up from her. We both had messy houses.
My mother loved clothes and told me if she would have a second career it would have been as a fashion buyer. Her upstairs and basement is full of very beautiful colourful clothes, suits that she picked out material and had her aunt at first and later Pani Odrach sew for her. She had so many clothes dewn partially because she wanted to support her seamstress Mrs. Odrach. My mother was generous and gave to Charities which still today keep sending us free gifts and material asking her to donate again.
My mother was born in 1931 and she was 94 years old. She told me when she saw her first car coming down the street at night with two white lights she got scared and jumped in the ditch to hide. My mother grew up and lived through war and scape to another country where as an immigrant who couldn't speak english but could speak fluent Ukraininan, Polish and German and even a bit of French, felt like she was treated as a second class citizen that had to hide her heritage.
At 94 my mother was not old. She was never old. My mother did not want to die, she was enjoying her life too much to die. She was always learning. She surprised me when she bought a Sony laptop in early 1990's and learned to send emails and do her banking on line. Even before me she set up all her bill payments to be automatic. One day I was shocked to receive a money transfer from her online more than 20 years ago. I called her and asked how did you do this? She said she asked for help learnd it. She got herself online with AOL when it was version 1 before they sent us all those floppy disks for the new versions. And she still has her AOL email. She did her own complicated tax returns before her son in law Walter took them over in 2017 and then I did in 2000. My mother didn't watch much tv. She had no interest in sitcoms or movies she only set herself up with a small tv to watch the news and to listen non stop to BNN business news. She listened to the analysts and she bought stocks. She wanted to set up her grand daughters and gave them money to invest. She set up a TFSA account for one grand daughter with very little investment and it is doing very well today. My mother wanted her whole family to learn to invest money. I only got more interested when I spent more time with her in 2017. Before that time I was interested in making money not in investing money. Now I share her passion for understanding the stock market. I remember when I was beginning and I would run to my mother and say that everything was crashing and she would calmly say so now is a ooog time to buy. She said it would go back up and I hard a hard time believing her. But, she had the experience of living through the many ups and downs before and she knew to stay calm.
We all knew my mother in different ways. Her neighbours Beth and Peter call her Mama and they helped her a lot when Ostap died in 1998 an after Beth's mother passed away. Ulya next door brought my mother food with beautifully cooked dinners and deserts many with a German accent. Her neighbours Steve and Linda also called her Mom and they came and took care of her mail and her house when she came to visit me. Her best friends Clara and Anne and Lillian spent lots of time with her. She was very social and enjoyed their company. My mother hosted everyone at christmas at her house where everyone sat crammed in her Kitchen at the table until it was too much an my sister i the cooking an hosting.