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There was no funeral service, no community gathering after Arcelia Martinez died last March of COVID-19. Just hollow birthdays and longing.
Like thousands of other Bay Area families dealt a heartbreaking blow by the coronavirus, the tight-knit Martinez family could not come together to remember the cherished wife, mother and grandmother who loved bringing people together to share a home-cooked meal.
A shelter-in-place order prevented all that when the lifelong San Jose resident died March 21, 2020, at age 65, becoming one of the first victims of the deadly disease that has now claimed nearly 2,000 lives in Santa Clara County. But on Saturday, almost exactly a year after Martinez died, her loved ones finally — after a year of social distancing and online meetings — gathered to honor her life.
“She always said when she died, she wanted everybody to be happy, not sad. Of course she’s not going to take the sadness away from us because we are sad,” said her daughter, Gina. “But we’re just celebrating all weekend. That’s what she wanted.”
At a service Saturday afternoon at the Lima Family Erickson Memorial Chapel in Willow Glen, near where she used to live, dozens of relatives, co-workers and friends remembered Martinez, also known as “Pumpkin” as a beloved wife to Samuel, mother to four daughters — Gina, Sherri, Maryann and Samantha — grandmother to six, and relative and “second mother” to many others.
“What she loved most about her grandchildren was being called nana,” said her son-in-law, Miguel Cortez. “We all love her and we all miss her.”
Rev. Joseph Benedict from St. Joseph Cathedral Parish officiated the service — held outdoors with attendees in masks, spaced apart — calling Martinez “a woman of hospitality.”
“It’s not supposed to be this way,” he said. “All of this is made more difficult by this pandemic that took Arcelia’s life.”
Afterward, the family — including two of Martinez’s siblings who traveled from Colorado for the first time since the onset of the pandemic — gathered to share a catered meal and enjoy mariachi music, an attempt to enjoy each other’s company as she would have wanted, even amid the grief.
Her younger brother, Charles, recalled his big sister comforting him when he had bad dreams as a child. One time, he said, she took him to the Santa Clara County Fair and they got separated for a brief time.
“I’ve got you. You’re with me,” she said to quell his fear when they reunited. “She always had us. All of us.”
When she wasn’t working at FoodMaxx or Panda Express at the SAP Center, Martinez loved doting on her children and grandchildren, throwing backyard barbecues and rewatching movies, especially her favorite, This Christmas — even in July. She enjoyed camping and treasured trips to Lake Tahoe and Disneyland, which she visited with Maryann and a granddaughter, Alyssa, for the 9-year-old’s birthday.
On Saturday, Alyssa called her nana “a second mom.”
Martinez’s front door was always open for family, friends and acquaintances alike and she would be in the kitchen whipping up a meal the second someone so much as mentioned being hungry.
“Even though she was working two jobs, she’d give you her last dollar,” Gina said.
And she couldn’t pass up an opportunity to go shopping. Some of her favorite outfits were displayed next to the flower arrangements and photos at the service.
“We cleaned out her closet and there were so many clothes with tags on them,” said Gina, a San Jose resident who saw her mother every week. “Some on the floor, next to the bed, inside shopping bags. She loved shopping.”
Holidays are especially hard without her. No more of her tamales, which coworkers knew to put in orders for early, at Christmas or pozole at New Year’s. No special birthday meal — chicken, biscuits and gravy for Gina. And no more homemade birthday treats, a tradition Martinez started after Aki’s Bakery, where the family used to buy cakes, shuttered its doors.
Losing her suddenly, said Maryann, without being able to visit during her final days “was the worst thing ever.”
Last year, just before she died and as Gina was approaching her 49th birthday, Martinez spoke excitedly about her daughter’s 50th birthday the following year, telling her, “We’re going to do something really big!”
Now, as that milestone birthday draws near, Gina doesn’t feel much like having a party without her beloved mom around.
“It’s so hard for me to celebrate,” she said. “She had so much life to live, so much life in her. She didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserves this.”