MONTREAL -- A year after the WHO declared COVID-19 a global health pandemic, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon, as vaccines flow into the province.

But, for the families of those who lost their lives to COVID-19, there is no going back to normal.

“She was a kind person,” said Stephen Amadori Sr of his late-wife Christine Amadori. “[She was] warm, caring, had a good sense of humour.”

On November 23rd, Christine Amadori fell inside her home. She was admitted to the Lakeshore General Hospital, where doctors discovered she had a blood infection.

“She's on the fourth floor in the ward for almost two weeks and she’s getting better,” said Amadori. His wife had hoped to be able to leave the hospital in time to be home for Christmas.

“Then, lo and behold on December 5th or 4th or whatever, I get a call from the doctor who says to me, your wife's got COVID,” Amadori said.

The news shook the family. Christine Amadori was diabetic and had a heart condition, making her vulnerable to severe illness.

"I mean, your heart sinks,” said Stephen Amadori Jr, Christine’s son. “You don't know what to do at that point, right? You think positive, you think the best, listen she's strong, she'll get through it, she's a fighter."

She fought for two more weeks, but on Dec. 29, Christine Amadori passed away from complications due to COVID-19.

In the year of the pandemic, stories just like Amadori's have been told 10,518 times in Quebec. Perhaps the worst part is that it’s one that too often ends without a proper goodbye.

“It was like she just disappeared and that was it,” said Robert Fairbairn. His mother Bernice died on April 29, six weeks after being diagnosed with COVID 19.

“We could not see her or touch her or anything like that,” he said. “We never saw her again.”

Closure is hard to come by for the families of COVID-19 victims. It took months for Fairbairn just to get his mother’s personal belongings from the residence where she had been living.

“It’s a different way of saying goodbye to somebody,” he said, “When you don't have a funeral, the grieving is very different."

And while the memories stay, Fairbairn finds it hard not to think about what could have been. He believes the system failed his mother.

“She's not coming back,” he said. “These people we love aren't coming back, so, we need to walk into the future with hopeful thoughts."

Fairbairn says commemorating the lives lost is a touching gesture to the families, but for Stephen Amadori Sr, telling his wife’s story is about more than just remembering.

“If we can get one person, change one person's mind about COVID,” he said, “and have them realize that COVID is a serious disease and it’s a killer and it's relentless, we've saved one person's life and that gives my wife's passing some purpose."