Mother’s Day is almost here, and like many husbands, my son and I will take my wife, Esther, and a few other moms we know out to brunch. Every year we stop by the cemetery to pay respects to Esther’s mom. Last year, we visited my mom as well.

My mom Passed away last year on Easter Sunday. Her loss left a void I didn’t expect. When my father passed away, my parish priest gave me a piece of advice that I never forgot. He said the best way to keep someone’s memory alive is to share your favorite stories of that person. I’ve given that piece of advice to many people over the past nine years.

In that spirit, let me tell you about my mother.

She was born in 1930, the oldest of eight children born in a corrugated tin shack in rural Puerto Rico. Their home had no electricity or running water, and the Family had an outhouse that wasn’t quite next to the house. They lived in an area called Pasto Seco, which translates to dry grass.

Her childhood bore no resemblance to the way children grow up today. There was no internet, iPhones, or TikTok. Each child was given chores that would seem like indentured servitude to an iPhone-toting preteen. When she was a little girl, she and my Tio Oscar were each given a bucket to collect water from a local stream. To get to the stream, they had to walk through an open field occupied by a wild horse. The horse terrified her, but coming home with empty buckets scared her more. It would have meant no water for the family, earning her a vicious spanking.

Solving that problem gave her a failure is not an option mentality that served her well throughout her life.

The late 1940s were a prosperous time for America. The economy was thriving, and the G.I. Bill allowed veterans to attend college and buy homes for their new families. This opened up many jobs in factories and in the service industry.

Mom came to New York in 1948 to live with an aunt, who everyone called Tia. Tia convinced her landlord to make her the super of the building where she lived. One perk of this job was that she and her family lived rent-free in a five-bedroom apartment in Spanish Harlem. Besides her four daughters, she had many adopted ones too, as Mom and many of her cousins left the Puerto Rican countryside for Manhattan.

Mom was taken out of school when she was in third grade to help my grandmother with their growing family. They viewed it as vocational training for when she had her own family living down the road from them. In the 1930s, the concept of a young girl from Pasto Seco becoming something other than a housewife was about as likely as traveling to Mars.

A few years later, Mom was a bridesmaid at her cousin Josephine’s wedding, where they introduced her to a friend of the groom, a man from the Galicia region of Spain. It was a quick introduction and to be honest, he didn’t leave much of an impression on her. She liked to dance while he was a wallflower, plus each of them brought a date to the wedding. Although he didn’t make an impression on her, she made one on him.

When Mom broke up with her boyfriend, the man from Galicia, took an interest in her. It wasn’t a mutual interest — but he was persistent. On the surface, the girl from Las Piedras and the boy from El Freijo had little in common until you looked closer. They both grew up in the country, came from large families, and knew what it was like to go to bed a little hungry because of the need to stretch dinner to feed a growing family.

Mom and Dad were married in 1959 and became parents in 1961 when my brother Bob was born. I came along three years later. Mom and Dad were ready to take their next step in pursuit of the American Dream. They bought a piece of property in Queens to build a home to raise their children. They weren’t expecting what came next.

The family who lived next to the plot of land they bought had other plans for that vacant lot. It was used for summer cookouts and overnight car parking for many years. They weren’t too keen when this little man with an accent showed up with plans to build a house on it. So, they made things difficult for him, pulling up the stakes that marked the property line and stealing the building materials.

Mom and Dad were true partners and seeing him at his wit’s end hurt Mom greatly, so she reasoned with him. “I know it’s our property, and we have every right to be there, but look at all the headaches they’re giving us. Do you really want to live next to people like that?”

They sold the property and bought another one a few blocks away. It was the right decision. When they moved into their new home, they met a different type of neighbor, whose values were like theirs. The block was full of young parents putting down roots and starting families of their own. Many became lifelong friends.

Mom was a homemaker in an era when that meant more than it does today. Dad traveled a lot for business, and she managed the family and the household. She stayed home and took care of my brother and I. Since she had two sons; she learned their interests. Bob and I were Mets fans, so she sat and watched games with us, groaning whenever John Milner or Ed Kranepool hit into a double play, ending a rally.

Some would say that she was both a mother and father to us, but that’s not accurate. We had a father who was part of our lives. He hated traveling out of town on business, but that was the best way he could support our family. I also understand that some parents need to assume both roles out of necessity, but luckily, that wasn’t us. Mom was our mother, which was more than enough. Those fortunate enough to have a strong relationship with their mother know what I mean.

I had two eye surgeries before I was 7 years old. Both times, Mom was sitting by the bed when I woke up, her smile masking her concerns. She found creative ways of turning my eye exercises into a game and comforted me when I came home crying because the other kids made fun of my eyepatch.

She was there for me, even when she had no clue what I was doing. As a freshman art student, I was given an assignment called Red. Students could use any medium to complete the assignment, but their classmates needed to see and feel the color red. The assignment confused me, but after two or three days, I had an idea, painting myself red. She didn’t quite grasp the concept, but she helped me dye old clothes and paint my hair red, shaking her the entire time.

I saw the worry she endured when my brother joined the Navy, and they sent his ship to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping force. I remember how stressed she was when the UK and Argentina went to war over the Falkland Islands, and how she worried that the U.S. Navy would intervene in that conflict.

These days, many married couples have a hard time staying married for over 5 years; my parents were married for 56. While many remember their later years as that bickering older couple, they didn’t see how Mom put her health on hold when Dad became terminally ill. A breast cancer survivor who needed a walker to get around because radiation treatments destroyed one of her vertebrae, she visited him every day.

I remember a rainy night when Dad developed pneumonia. When the doctor said he probably wouldn’t make it through the night, all the pain in her body left, replaced with a pain in her heart.

When Dad passed away, my brother Bob and I saw a pattern developing — people speculating on how much time Mom had until she’d be joining Dad. In the backyard, the kitchen, or the corner of the living room, friends and family members slipped it into the conversation. I was more amused than offended, thinking; you don’t know Margarita.

In the eight years since Dad passed, she watched her granddaughters grow up and make her proud. Watching her grandson grow from a rambunctious toddler to an energetic eight-year-old helped ease the pain.

Faith taught me that death is the end of one’s physical life, but it is more of a change than an ending. I found peace knowing that Mom passed while sleeping in her bed on Easter Sunday, surrounded by family and children. Wherever Mom and Dad are right now, I know they are together, reunited after eight years, but eight years is a blink of an eye compared to eternity.

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