It's been nearly a year since Mona Bernard made a discovery that would forever change her life.
"I found her," said Mona Bernard. "It was like I knew."
She found the body of her 22-year-old daughter, Cassidy Bernard, inside a Waycobah, N.S., home in October 2018.
The young woman's now 17-month-old twin girls, Mya and Paisly, were also inside -- alone and vulnerable.
"When I found the little girls, they were not good," said Mona Bernard. "They were so cold. I wouldn't have made it if I lost all three. I wouldn't have been here myself. I have a big family, but that would've crushed me. I wouldn't have been able to handle that. So they saved me."
Bernard remembers on that fateful day frantically trying to get a hold of her daughter, but when numerous text messages went unreturned, she knew something was wrong.
Since then, she has been left not only to deal with the grief of losing her daughter, but having to raise the two babies left behind.
"I was just lucky enough to find them alive, honest to God," Mona Bernard said. "They're meant to live and meant to be on Earth. That's why I found them; they're my blessings."
Cassidy Bernard's death has shaken the community in Waycobah. There are a lot of unanswered questions. The RCMP say, so far, nobody has been arrested and there's no update on the case.
"I hear the same thing from the cops every time," Mona Bernard said. "'We got no answers, you have to be patient, you have to wait.' That's what I hear, so I'm living my life, trying to be patient, hoping because they need me to. They left these children to die with their mother."
As the one-year anniversary of Cassidy's death approaches, she's being remembered as a young mother who had her whole life ahead of her.
"I miss her," said Mona Bernard. "She was my baby."
For now, she's being remembered through her daughters, who will one day have to learn what happened to their mother.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Kyle Moore.
