A few stories and pics from 2026 about my mom

My mother, Sandra Ann Rosen Halabi, died July 15, 2026. This is not an obituary, just a few a few notes and photos from this last half year.

My mother, always a fan of dark chocolate, shifted towards extremely dark. Different people tried giving her different bars, to see what she approved or disapproved of. A few years ago I hit the jackpot: Endangered Species Extreme Dark 88%. That was it. She didn’t want any other chocolate. (It is inedible, in my opinion). Sadly, it got harder and harder to find. In January I ordered 16 bars! There was hassle with the delivery. It might have been out of stock? It eventually arrived.

Even before New Years there were some premonitions of relapse (leukemia). Something was going wrong with her longterm memory – (short term was… put it this way, if you extended a 15 minute conversation to 20 minutes, you could hear the same story a third time). And something about how she got up, sat down, moved around, even reached for things in the kitchen. Something wasn’t right. And it would turn out to be a relapse. And given the options (same treatment as before, try something new, hospice) we trusted the team and rechallenged the disease with the same chemo that had worked once. And it was working. And then it wasn’t. We got the choices again, but the team was making a clear recommendation. My mom, that day, followed closely. Understood. She knew she was choosing home hospice. And even if she would come to forget the implication in the coming weeks, that day she knew. And was able to make her choice.

And then I ordered more chocolate. And I went right to the management folks, to make sure we’d get the delivery. 24 more bars, for a total of 40 this year. (3 oz. bars. Big ones)

In the meantime, home hospice meant no more hospital and clinic visits (transportation was hard, getting around was hard, one appointment had been eating up a whole day and leaving her exhausted.) – which was great. And lots of calls and visitors, which she loved.

Not everyone else fully got it. My mom had a history. A medical history. Tumors, adenomas, lots of precancerous stuff, lung cancer, a major stroke, multiple seizures, intestinal blockage, leukemia that she should not have survived, but was just coming off almost a year’s remission. Nine lives, right? People were trying to count how many she had left. When you get a reputation for cheating death… Making matters worse, when I asked directly (the day we chose hospice) the doctor responded “I don’t have a crystal ball, but days… to a few weeks.” That was April 20 (I think). April passed. May passed. June passed. There was some decline, but it was gentle. People were trying to count. She’s not up to nine yet? Can’t be.

I can’t find photos from the last few months. That would have been hard. But I recorded her several times, and I captured some stills:

My mom had been a regular at the Y. She loved her class. And all the socializing. And as she got healthier post retirement… (she retired in 2006, age 65)… put it this way – she was the plank champion of her class. Three minutes? Nothing. (I thought it was silly – until I tried).

So this note, which is strange, is not really surprising: “Yesterday at Saturday am bootcamp (where many of us former Y Sandy fans go) she had a grand finale of 3 escalating-length planks in memory of Sandy. And then I heard that the Y Saturday morning bootcamp class also included planks as a Sandy memorial. Definitely not one of the usual memorials, but a fitting one for the Plank Queen! Several people mentioned fond memories of Sandy after class.”

Last note for today. The Endangered Species website, today. Extreme Dark is out of stock? It’s a shipping delay? Nah, we sold them out.

So what happened?

The company ran out, but she had three bars left…