For Darlene Rivera, 43, that meant remembering her mother, Astrid Roldán, who died almost three months after the storm. Ms. Roldán was 70 and had diabetes, and struggled to keep her insulin cool after losing power. The public housing complex where she lived did not allow residents to have a generator in their apartments, Ms. Rivera said.

“The desperation those days, without electricity, without water, without communication, deteriorated her health over months and it led to her heart attack,” Ms. Rivera said.

Ms. Rivera said that President Trump’s remarks denying the official death toll on the island were especially hurtful and lacked “human sensibility,” especially in light of her mother’s fate.

“There is no reason for my mother not to be here today,” she said.

For Carmen Cruz and her husband, it has been a long 12 months since Hurricane Maria’s galloping 155-mile-an-hour winds blew away the couple’s wooden home in a matter of hours.

“It was a little house, two bedrooms,” said Ms. Cruz, 54, breaking into tears. “But for me it was a castle.”

The couple and their two daughters slept in cots at a neighbor’s house for three months after the hurricane before moving into the home of a deceased family member. The family is still wrangling with the federal government over money to rebuild their home. The generosity and the solidarity among neighbors was the only positive remnant of the storm, Ms. Cruz said.

“We need to continue being united,” she said. “Our strength is in our union.”

[Creativity from the chaos: Hurricane Maria and the arts.]