Tanya Elena Joyce Hanson, b. Aug. 30, 1950, d. Feb. 14, 2008

Bill's sister, his only sibling, Tanya, died February 14th of a long illness.  The illness started in August 2002 when she had trouble with her balance and eyesight.  It turned out to be something going on with her brain that she was able to partially recover from and lead a more independent life.   In July 2006, about the time we were visiting her, she started to have small seizures.  Unfortunately, they got worse and she ended up in and out of hospitals and having much more severe motor control issues than before.  Her brain kept swelling, causing the seizures, and she was never able to lead an independent life again.  Physically she was in wonderful shape, but the motor control parts of her brain were not working.  A few months ago it got much worse and unfortunately this time the damage started to affect the rest of her brain.  A few weeks ago she went went into a coma, a coma she never came out of.  Her mother was with her the last couple of weeks, her son Jeremy was with her as much as he could, and her ex-husband Randy was visiting and helping as much as he could.  We all will miss her terribly. 

We have some old scanned photographs to share.

This is Tanya before Bill was even born:

Christmas 1975:

Randy (Tanya's husband at the time) Tanya and Bill some time before 1979 when Jeremy was born:

The Joyce Family (Bill, his father Bill, mother Elena, Tanya and Randy ) in September 1977 (love those clothes):

A photo taken by Bill's godfather Sven about 1982.   Bill, his father, Elena with dog Bambie, Mila (Sven's wife) with Bambie's son Petca, Tanya, and Randy holding Jeremy.  Mila and Sven were moving to Hawaii and could not take the two dogs.  Petca was too high strung so we found him a good home with someone who really wanted him.  Bambie lived the good life with Bill's parents until her death.

Two photos from our Christmas Cruise in the Caribbean in 1999 which we took everyone on.

At the Flower Forest in Barbados:

Formal night on the cruise ship Celebrity Galaxy:

Two photos from our trip to visit Tanya in May 2000.

Tanya is behind Diane at Captain Cook State Park:

Waiting in Kenai, Alaska.

Tanya taking our picture when we visited her in July 2006:

A photo of Tanya and Elena from February 2007 in a hospital:

Photos and memories are all we have.  Even though some of the photos are not the best we wanted to share them.

Somewhere in storage we have more photos but these are what we had on the computer already scanned or taken recently.  This way you also can see photos of Bill's father, who died in February 1990.

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