As a self-absorbed teenager and young adult at that time, I showed little interest in the life of my niece Liane.\u00a0I missed something important here, and I think that it\u2019s time for me to own up to it. I did love my niece and\u00a0I missed an extraordinary life, short as it was.<\/p>\n
Liane was about 12 years old when she visited Mom, Yank, and me in San Leandro.\u00a0That visit proved to be the last time I would ever see Liane. She spent the night and was relegated to sleep in the extra bed in my room. I remember when the lights went out and we were both awaiting sleep to overtake us, she asked me if I loved her. I assured her that I did, told her to go to sleep, and soon after,\u00a0we drifted off.<\/p>\n
Over the years, I would hear mom\u2019s reports of her visits to Liane in Northern California. Mom always had a big heart, with plenty of room to love Liane and<\/em> her two siblings. On one occasion, Mom talked about how wonderful the folks were at Peoples Temple, how they asked her to join them. Thankfully, mom was too savvy to be swayed by the rhetoric. She would never consider joining anything that separated her from her family and Reno.<\/p>\n