NIKITA TEJAY ROSS

After suffering through a multiyear ordeal of early onset dementia, Nikita Tejay Ross has finally been freed from this vile and relentless illness and is now in a far more forgiving place. ‘Niki’ is survived by her mother, Shirley Neault and her husband Andrew Ross; both of whom absolutely adored her. The world is a little greyer without her infectious laughter and radiant, recurring smile.

Niki was born in Winnipeg and spent much of her younger life around St. Boniface and with grandparents in Cook’s Creek, MB. She was a decent track and field athlete in school and had an affinity for artsy projects: painting, in particular. This creative streak further progressed to dressmaking and sewing. Niki’s skills advanced to a level whereby she was professionally recognized via dressmaking and design diplomas. In her late teens, Niki’s attractive exterior also allowed her to model briefly.

Married at a young age (in a dress that she made herself), Niki’s subsequent years are captured in photos showing cheerful gatherings with family and friends. Starting primarily in retail sales, Niki later worked in administrative accounting roles at various companies. She always pulled her weight in the world in endeavoring to be employed.

Becoming single again in 2008, it was just after this time that she and Andrew began ogling each other. Their chemistry was immediate. Niki and Andrew became close to inseparable and were living together within 2 months. They never looked back.

Niki continued with her earlier interests, but Andrew now had a partner to accompany him on wilderness travel. Snowmobiling, road trip vacations, mountain hiking, and camping became consistent events. But it was wilderness canoeing that truly proved that Andrew and Niki were meant to be. Both learned the rewards of intense toil and effort as they portaged through mud, heat, bugs and cold seeking out the next body of water on the map. The reward was one’s own lake to camp on, outstanding vistas, unencumbered sunsets and the observation of wildlife in settings that few get to see.

Andrew proposed to Nikita on a canoe trip two days paddle from any egress point. They were married in 2012 on a trip to Las Vegas. In the years to follow, they additionally enjoyed time at West Hawk Lake, attending concerts, and pursuing their outdoor interests.

A cruel hand of fate interrupted this perfect life when Nikita was diagnosed with early onset dementia in 2021 after several years of unpredictable and uncharacteristic behavior. As she would have done for him, Andrew set about caring for and advocating for Nikita in the difficult years to follow. After years of seemingly glacially paced but consistently metronomic decline, Nikita Tejay Ross succumbed to her illness at the far too early age of 57.

Andrew would especially like to thank: All staff no matter the role at Heritage Life Personal Care Home in Niverville, MB, Beth Helliar of the Alzheimer’s Society of Manitoba, anyone involved with the ASM early onset dementia support group, Reliable Home Care Agency, Dr. Carly Jill Scramstad, Laurel Mitchell of Southern Health, Rich Malusic and the gang at Sign World, Mike Dickson and any and all who enquired into Nikita’s status over the years.

Cremation has taken place. There will not be a service, but anyone interested is invited to review the photo-biography of Nikita above.

Nikita,

You were the love of my life,

and I pray that we will meet again.

You will always be ‘my baby’.

“On the hard days, we must remember; grief is not a burden – it is love refusing to let go.”

– Jameson Arasi

_______________________

Nikita Tejay Ross

Further memories from 

husband Andrew Ross

-March, 2026

There not being a service or formal eulogy for Nikita, I feel compelled to expand upon her obituary slightly. Not wanting to rhapsodize, I nonetheless feel the need to extol further upon the positive characteristics of my wife, best friend and true love, should anyone choose to read onwards. I will forever be grateful for the time that I had with her over the past 18+ years.

As a note, I was the only person that somehow got away with calling Nikita the more abbreviated ‘Niki’ for some odd reason. So, I’ll call her Niki most of the time from this point onwards. I first laid eyes on Niki at the commencement of a new job opportunity whereby she was already employed with that company. I remember the first time I saw her. She was sitting at her computer station with her back to me. When being introduced, she turned around and, not to sound too corny, my breath was taken away. (We would not be together until some time after that day.….Cupid being slightly asleep at the wheel for a few months.) Niki wasn't known to roam the office that often, but any time I caught a glimpse of her, I was impressed by how she carried herself. She seemed humble and very down-to-earth. And she had the best walk in those days…! Her skills at dressmaking and design became clear in that I seldom saw her in the same outfit twice. She loved to create her own attire!

Niki and I really started getting to know each other better at an after-hours function on a wintry Friday afternoon. She and I were amongst the last to leave. She saddled over to me and next thing you know, we were comparing common topics; one of the most obvious being the fact that both of our marriages were over at this point. Beyond that commonality, we got talking about a lot of what we liked to do in life, and I think both of us were fascinated by what the other was capable of in their respective areas of strength and interest. Cautiously, but aggressively, Niki and I quickly became aware of the fact that we wanted to be with each other far more than we wanted to be apart. As such, we naturally began to cohabitate within a few months of meeting and, per the obituary, never looked back. It never once felt wrong.

I will always remember our first road trip together to the Rocky Mountains via Edmonton's Yellowhead Highway approach. Niki had not seen the mountains since she was a young girl. When we were 100+ miles away, she saw the mountains starting to show up in the windshield and became excited to the point of starting to take pictures. I was laughing fairly hard at the time and told her she might want to wait another hour because they were going to get a whole lot bigger! My point to this is that the appreciative curiosity she showed regarding almost anything new to her world was contagious. She had the ability to balance out my more serious personality by getting me to slow down and appreciate how she was seeing things for the first time. There was a bit of Ying and Yang to our relationship that meshed extremely well. While overviewing photographs of her that I selected for her online obituary, the recurring theme was the fact that it was actually extremely difficult to pick photos. Her 1000-kilowatt smile appears in almost all pictures of her! And it doesn’t matter what year! From the toddler years up to the very last years when her brain was moving in a direction completely contrary to who she was, that smile was an ever-present comfort to me whenever I saw it.

One of the first hikes in the mountains that we ever did was Cory Pass near Banff Alberta. It's a grueling 1000-meter vertical climb, with approach angles up to 30 degrees at the beginning. The hiking guide warns one to “be prepared to burn off your breakfast." They weren't kidding. Niki was moving a bit more slowly than I on that hike, but she absolutely would not be left behind. I remember her literally crawling up some of the grades on her hands and knees, not wanting to miss the panoramic view at the top. Many more hikes occurred over the years, but that one instantly proved her mettle in tackling difficult endeavors knowing the pay-off at the end was 1000X worth the effort.

Niki's smile was bright enough to warrant an expanded discussion. Her lips were frequently highlighted with red lipstick, and she rarely went out in public without her makeup on. I found this to be kind of cute. We had adventures whereby even a few less ounces of weight make a bit of a difference. The canoe trips are a perfect example whereby ‘less is more’…..at least in terms of the payload one must portage. But even though we were never going to see anybody for possibly days on end, Nikita's makeup would come along for the journey, and I must say that I always had the best-looking canoeing companion in the woods on any given day. Deep down, I didn't mind. We went on dozens if not hundreds of canoe trips, and paddled thousands of kilometers. Some of our favorite destinations include the Bowron canoe circuit in BC, Quetico Park in Ontario, the Experimental Lakes area past Kenora, Ontario, and various remote areas in the Whiteshell Provincial Park of Manitoba. I’ve seen Niki paddle 40kph headwinds with me for hours intuitively knowing that there was no chance for a break if progress was going to be made. She astounded me after getting sick one night when we camped 20km down Maligne Lake (past Spirit Island) near Jasper, AB. Feverish, and with subsequent weakness kicking in, we decided to get her back to the car ASAP. The weather in the mountains had turned that night. The sun was gone and it had snowed at this higher altitude. Temperatures had decreased, and we had to battle a headwind for the duration of the return trip. Somehow, we made it. I stuffed her into a rented cabin and tucked her into bed before backtracking back to Jasper to get medication for her. I never heard her indicate anything to the effect that this would be her last canoe trip. She loved these types of adventures as much as I did, despite the ending on this particular trip hardly being ideal.

I actually proposed to Nikita on a canoe trip 2 days paddle from any exit point, as I had mentioned in the obituary. Unbeknownst to her, I had a mushy card and diamond ring buried in the bottom of a barrel that we used to waterproof key possessions. This was on the Winnipeg River bordering Nopiming and Whiteshell parks. I remember catching a fish right off the campsite fairly late in the day and thinking I really didn't want to have fish tonight because I had more important things to do! But, regardless, after eating, I surprised Niki with a diamond ring in the middle of nowhere at one of the best camp sites (LeVasseur Island!) we'd ever spent the night at. (I believe the island was named after one of La Verendryes’ voyageurs in the 1700’s.) Niki and I spent the next three days canoeing to our exit destination feeling euphoric about our continuing future together.

Having each been married once before and not wanting to repeat the lavishness that seems to accompany first marriages, we took a solo trip to Las Vegas and got married on February 1, 2012. Nikita was always proud to be married to me, and I to her, of course. To this day and standing still where she put it years ago is 1) our marriage license, 2) a photo from our wedding and 3) the card that I gave her when I proposed at the island campsite, sitting as a little shrine on a dresser in our bedroom. She refused to take it down, despite the passing of time. I also have a chalkboard on my fridge upon which she wrote in 2021: “I love you, Andrew, for all that you do.” Hearts with arrows through them are scattered around the words. Niki had just been diagnosed with early onset frontotemporal dementia, but she was still functioning at a level that allowed for this kind of expression to occur. She knew how concerned I was for her with the changes that were coming about.

Niki lost a longer tenured job in 2016 and struggled in the next 5 years to find consistent employment. Even though apathy is a frequent early indicator of dementia, Niki applied for and in many cases (regrettably) was fired from 12 jobs in the five-year period from 2016 to 2021. I'm indicating this not so much to cast a shadow on her in any way, so much as to indicate just how persistent and diligent she was in wanting to pull her weight in the world. With my encouragement, she would always keep trying to find an opportunity in her field that would give her ‘a home away from home’. But it never happened. In early 2021 after being hired and fired from 3 separate jobs (none of which made it past day 2), I knew something was ‘off’. Further testing over the next half year eventually confirmed the worst. The puzzling symptoms that had come about continued to morph and combine into a horrible downward spiral as the disease progressed.

For about 8 years now, I have watched in horror and helplessness as one negative symptom after another reared its head to assail my beautiful wife. Apathy became forgetfulness. Forgetfulness became inability. The days of her raiding my newspaper for the crossword came to an end. Her consistent morning ritual of putting on her makeup ended. The ability to speak and communicate ended. The ability to walk on her own ended. Her recognition of me largely ended. Her ability to eat and drink fizzled. And eventually this disease was cruel enough to tackle Niki's brain to the point where she did not even know how to swallow food, drink, or medicine anymore. Force feeding her as an alternative could have resulted in her choking to death. I loathe dementia and feel for anyone, regardless of age, that suffers from it. But I spent as much time as I could with Niki, both at the care home and when taking her back to her real home and bed in St. Francois Xavier on weekends. I loved fussing over her, and making sure she was fed, clean, warm, and entertained. The latter (entertainment) consisted mostly of bright cartoons with frenetic animation; SpongeBob and Bugs Bunny seemed to be the favorites. I can only imagine how well she would have treated me had the situation been reversed, and I was going to do everything in my power not to fail her.

Despite the rawness of the past few years, I have fantastic memories of Nikita. Reviewing the many photos and videos that we took of each other, it is very comforting to see her and I in our prime doing the things that we loved to do. I will always remember sitting with her in the middle of a remote Alaskan highway with no traffic coming in either way over the half hour it took us to have a beer together. It was hilarious watching Niki wrinkle her nose in disgust when I joined the Sourtoe Cocktail Club in Dawson City Yukon only to partake herself shortly thereafter. (Look it up!) I will cherish the memory of her excitement when she found the perfect wedding dress in a Queen’s St. boutique in Toronto for our wedding. I always enjoyed our monthly ritual of trying out new and unknown restaurants when we just didn’t feel like cooking. Knowing what was to follow, I will forever be grateful for making the decision to take Nikita on one last big vacation in 2022: that being an Alaskan cruise (something we had talked about doing many times in the preceding years.) Many days were spent sitting on the dock at West Hawk Lake with a drink in hand both enjoying the moment and planning the next big adventure. I am extremely comforted by the fact that Nikita did not really seem to know that things were wrong with her…… when things were going very, very wrong with her in reality! And I am especially appreciative of the fact that the end for Nikita was as peaceful, calm and comforting as could have been ordered. I have come to learn that the human body takes care of itself to some degree when decline and suffering is involved. She was receiving the best care possible under the circumstances and did not appear to be in any sort of pain, to my overwhelming relief.

“Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.”  

-Schopenhauer 1819

I find this quote to be very accurate in its warning to never take what you have for granted. I was very fortunate to have been with Nikita for the years that we had together and that has never been more obvious to me than right now.

Please rest in peace, Nikita.

I love you beyond

what words can convey!

Your husband, friend,

true love, and soulmate,

Andrew G. Ross

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ETHICAL DEATH CARE

Cremation & Life Celebrations

1833 Portage Avenue - Winnipeg

204-421-5501 - www.ethicaldeathcare.com

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