For most Western New Yorkers, the 2023 holiday season – which featured one of the warmest Christmas days in history – included a reminder of the difference a year can make.
The Blizzard of 2022 that pummeled the region for days left tens of thousands without power and heat and disrupted virtually every planned get-together. The holidays this year brought joy back for most.
But for others, the holidays were a reminder of a much more devastating reality: that they would always bring to mind the death of a loved one in the storm.
Early this year, Edie Syta got into her car and headed onto Route 33. She drove past the Best Street exit and pulled onto the shoulder of the expressway.
There, she broke into tears as she considered the final moments of her mother, Stasia Syta, a victim of the Buffalo blizzard.
“You know your last breath is coming. Like, what is racing through your mind?” Edie Syta said in an hourlong interview. “Are you thinking of your children? Are you thinking of the Lord? Are you thinking of heaven? Are you thinking about the snow? Are you thinking, like, ‘(Shoot), I shouldn’t have come out here?’”
Two family friends found Stasia Syta’s body in her car on Christmas afternoon one year ago, near where Edie parked several months later.
The 73-year-old West Side resident had gone out on Dec. 23 to pick up fish from the Broadway Market for her traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner.
Stasia Syta was on the phone intermittently with Edie and her twin brother, Peter, but she died before they could get help to her.
She was one of at least 47 victims of…
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