The funeral in Waterdown in the fall of 2005 was small. Most who knew Yvonne, 90, were already gone.

In the church that day, they played a recording from 1951, a nine-year-old girl singing Ave Maria. The voice was that of Claudette, Yvonne's only child.

The song made Claudette cry that day. Mother's end had not come softly.

Yvonne was born in Azilda, northern Ontario, second oldest of the 20 Labine children. At 14, she was sent off to Sudbury to be a doctor's maid.

She married and moved to Hamilton in 1940. Her husband was a crane operator, a carpenter and a nasty man.

"I don't know if he was mentally ill or just mean-spirited," Claudette says.

She does know he abused her mother. She saw it nearly every day.

Thirty years ago, father left for the North and Yvonne was reborn. She got an apartment in downtown Hamilton, saw friends, went to Spain and Hawaii.

Claudette, now 65, has been a teacher and artist. Husband Tom Mancini was principal at Canadian Martyrs.

They remember the summer day 10 years ago when a call came from a Good Samaritan who had taken Yvonne to St. Joseph's Hospital. She'd had a bad fall and nearly got hit by a bus. Claudette already knew that her mom was starting to get confused, and tried to persuade her to move to a retirement home.

There were no brothers and sisters to back up Claudette. "The good thing was I didn't have family to argue with. The bad thing was I had no one to help."

At St. Joe's, Yvonne refused to get out of bed and walk, and declined physiotherapy. Next stop, a retirement home in Waterdown. She had a nice place there, but sharing with roommates rarely went well. On one occasion, they were throwing glasses at each other. Yvonne fell often there.

Then she had a medication overdose and ended up at McMaster, suffering terrible hallucinations. She couldn't go back to the retirement home and was on no list for a nursing home.

So for seven months, she languished in hospital. She got little care because she wasn't really sick. But she had become obese and confused.

"They did bathe her there, but with all the folds in her skin, it was very difficult to keep up her hygiene," Claudette says.

She and Tom went in nearly every day, did what they could. It was exhausting.

Claudette had worked on MPP Ted McMeekin's byelection campaign in 2000, and after he won she asked him for help.

Within the month, he'd found a place for Yvonne at St. Joseph's Villa in Dundas.

Just before Yvonne was to leave McMaster, she tried to walk across her room. She fell with a thud and broke her leg. "To the day she died, she thought she could walk," Claudette says.

At the villa, Yvonne moved in with the nuns on the fifth floor. Life was calmer.

She was in a world of her own. She saw Santa Claus in the trees, Gordie Howe down the hall.

She was picking gooseberries in the middle of winter and knitting with no wool.

Mercifully, she always knew Tom and Claudette and their two daughters.

After Thanksgiving 2005, she seemed near death. "But then one of my daughters went in to visit and found her sitting up in the lobby, having a gay old time," Claudette says. "The two of them had a special relationship and it was a blessing for both that mother's last lucid moment was with someone she loved."

Then she slipped into the coma. The doctor had asked if Yvonne should be taken to hospital. Claudette said no.

"When a friend bemoans the fact that a parent died suddenly and unexpectedly, I envy them not having to make the decision," Claudette says. "I did what I had to do and it still hurts."

pwilson@thespec.com

905-526-3391

(Go to www.thespec.com/fullcircle to see more of Claudette's story.)