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Jennifer James is 44, with autism severe enough she is unable to speak or read, or live on her own, or ever hold down a job. Yet life crashes around her, just the same.

Within a span of eight months, she lost her mother, Cecile, 79, her main caregiver, then her father Arnold, 90, a tender patriarch, and moved from the only home she knew, an age-battered farmhouse in the rolling hills outside Eganville.

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Then the government stepped in, to help, yet besiege her.

This is a woman who wore duct-taped headphones for comfort — connected to nothing — and would tear the newspaper into thin strips and carry the shreds in a bag. Her look was anguish. You only hoped her inner life was not.

With photographer Julie Oliver, we met the family at the farmhouse last fall, one of those quietly shattering experiences that move in and stay, long after the typing is done.

Traumatic changes?

Sister Wanda writes that Jennifer was so upset at her father’s death in October that, in the ensuing days, only long drives would console her, like a cranky child. “The day after our father died, I drove Jen for eight hours straight because she simply would not get out of the vehicle.” She eventually did, but not before physically lashing out at her two sisters.