Category: Song

My mother adored Mary. When mom prayed, she talked to Mary as if she were her best friend and neighbor. It was highly appropriate that she died on the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She was an organist and singer. Her soprano voice was the most beautiful voice I ever heard and that includes all famous sopranos. She played and sang many weddings and always counseled the brides to choose the Ave Maria for one of the songs at the wedding.

Her grandmother was named Immaculata after the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She also adored Mar,y, and she died at the moment of The Crowning of the Blessed Virgin Mary. My mother went to sing for the crowning, and when she returned, she found my great grandmother sitting up straight in a chair, with a rose on top of her head, dead. It was some kind of miracle because also great grandma knew and often said that she would die in the month of May, the month of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

When mom was 3 years old, she used to play the organ and sing for her Immaculata’s rosary group. They all clapped for her as if she was an absolute maestro, but she was just plunking on the keys and pretending to sing something. Regardless, it inspired my mother to be an organist and singer, and she made her living, along with my father, who also had a beautiful tenor voice, as a church musician. All their lives, my mother and father played and sang for Mass – so many Ave Marias. – On my mom’s gravestone is: “I will trust in the covert of thy wings” and on Dad’s gravestone, right next to her’s, is: Alleluia, Amen.