Friends for life
Art auction will raise money for young mother fighting terminal cancer
Life was good for Katrina Swartz, once.
You can see it in the photos; the pretty blonde whose eyes sparkle.
As a little girl, she bonded quickly with Aleksandra Stanojevic when they attended the E.C. Drury School for the Deaf together, in Milton. They both liked art.
“There were sleepovers, all the fun stuff,” recalls Aleksandra’s mom, Gordana Mosher.
“Even the fact Aleks lived in Grimsby and Katrina lived in Milton, as moms we found ways for the girls to hang out and stay in contact with each other” as they got older.
Life drew them to different places, though. Aleksandra returned to Niagara. She’s 30 years old now and getting married this year.
Katrina moved to Guelph. She is 31, recently married and battling terminal cancer.
She picked out her bridesmaid’s dress last year, though, and plans to be at Aleksandra’s wedding this summer.
Katrina’s smile — even in recent photos — masks the tragedies life has delivered.
In 2012 her second child, a sevenweek-old boy — her “sonshine” — died suddenly from a severe head injury. That set off a lengthy police investigation.
Three years later, in 2015, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Around the same time, her thenpartner admitted he had shaken and struck the crying baby against a hard object while she was asleep in another room.
She sat through the trial, watched him plead guilty to manslaughter and be sentenced to eight years in prison.
She was shattered, of course.
“I’m constantly crying inside,” she said in her victim impact statement, according to a report in the Guelph Mercury.
She had lost her hair by that point and was enduring treatments for the cancer — and the disease had robbed her of the ability to have more children.
“I feel like I’ve lost the will to live,” she told the court.
Her mother, Catherine, said in her statement she went into a deep depression after baby Chase’s death and was unable to sleep. She wondered if there were any good people left in the world.
Says Mosher, “I can’t imagine what Katrina and her mother have gone through. Just pure hell.
“Losing a grandson and son, and for the mother also having her daughter battling this disease. How much can any individual take?”
Life, broken, went on.
Katrina got stronger, and the cancer backed off.
Last year, she was married at a chapel on Lundy’s Lane in Niagara Falls and she and her husband are raising her other son in Guelph.
“I think stress brings on cancer,” says Mosher.
“Going through what she did with her baby son, and then being diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer … she had her remission, which we thought was great. She grew her hair back.
“But she kept complaining about her back and her head.”
It was the cancer, back for more. This time, doctors say, it’s terminal.
“Her story is unreal. I tell people, and they say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” says Mosher. “I wish I was.”
On June 1, at the Wine Route Art Gallery at 4012 Martin Rd. in Vineland Station, they’re holding an auction of Katrina’s paintings.
All the money raised will help with her expenses and go to her 10-yearold son — “he’s seen his mom these past few years going through devastation, and he’s such a good kid,” says Mosher.
In an interview via email, Katrina says with all the support she’s received, “all of this, I couldn’t ask for more.
“Without them it wouldn’t be the same. My mom is my No. 1 best friend … it doesn’t stop me, just walk this bumpy road.
“I hope my way out is helping others just to be happy.”
She gets by, she said, by “accepting, think positive everything will be OK and talk to your closest friend. Even music helps, too. One day at a time
…”
She works in acrylic and mostly likes to paint animals, and also sketches a bit. Her left hand isn’t working so well, so sometimes her dad sketches and she does the painting.
“It soothes me down and keeps my mind off the stress from my life,” she says.
Mosher — who Katrina calls “my second mom” — says “the deaf community is so close, we’re all kind of rallying behind her as much as we can.”
About a dozen of Katrina’s original
paintings will be available to be bid on that day between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Smaller prints can be purchased, too.
“This is the biggest thing she will ever do, to have her paintings (sold) on this type of scale. So she’s really pumped,” says Mosher.
A GoFundMe.com page, called Katrina The Brave, was started to help her through treatments. It has raised more than $6,000 of its goal of $10,000.
Despite the illness, Katrina fully plans on being there for her friend when she gets married this summer.
“Aleks is my life, always there when I need her or whenever. She will just show up,” says Katrina.
“I couldn’t ask for a better family/friend. I will definitely be on her side for her big day, like she’s there for me.”
Mosher calls her “a very strong person. I think any of us would have been just down and out. But she’s so positive.”
After her baby died, Mosher says, Katrina donated some of his organs “and she was proud to say she helped another life.
“That through baby Chase’s death, something good came out of it.
“How positive can somebody be? And yet she gives back. She gives back to us.”