A Time To Be Brave

A BRAVE HEART  Araceli Danilewicz, who lost her battle against COVID-19 on April 30, is pictured with her daughter Cecile Pagliarulo, reporter for The Beacon in front of her Passaic home.

CLIFTON  Losing my mother to COVID-19 has been the most difficult experience of my life and nothing will be the same again in the world, personally and literally. My mom went home to heaven on April 30. She experienced her first symptoms of the disease some time during Holy Week.

I have said to myself many times during this pandemic that one day this will all make sense. Thinking of my mother being alone in the hospital because visitors were not allowed simply shatters my heart. I understand why it is needed to be done with social distancing. It’s God I’m questioning that I cannot find any sense in letting so many suffer alone. Why let my mom, a sweet woman, bear this fight without her loved ones present? However, it is a story that has been told before more than 100 years ago.

The three children of Fatima, Portugal, in 1917 are well known for being visionaries to a series of Marian apparitions that took place during a six-month period. The Miracle of the Sun is often attributed to them. Their stories have been told repeatedly about the visitations they received from the Blessed Mother and her strong messages to them for the world. It is also well known, that two of the children — Francisco, 10, and Jacinta, 9, who were brother and sister, died young. They would later become known as the youngest non-martyred saints canonized by the Catholic Church. The third child, Lucia, their cousin, grew up to become a religious sister and lived to be 97. She is now a Servant of God.

Late last summer, I learned while covering a story on a new apostolate in the Diocese called St. Joseph’s Apostolate for the Sick and Dying, the details on Jacinta’s death. Both she and her brother were victims of the 1918 influenza pandemic, known as the Spanish flu. Francisco came down with the illness, and his death was more swift. Jacinta, just 9-years-old, suffered for months and died alone. She was in Lisbon. Her family was miles and miles away in Fatima. I found this fact heartbreaking that she died alone. But she did it bravely, she suffered for the sake of the conversion of sinners.

My mother may have lost the battle against the coronavirus but the meaning of brave has been truly redefined — it is facing the worst possible circumstances of being alone and suffering, regardless of outcome. While my mom was alone, she was brave like all the thousands who have fought and passed away from this disease. The silver lining — paradise in heaven with their Creator awaits them.

Throughout my mom’s life she had moments of bravery. From more simple things — like her brave and bold fashion sense everyone knew her for to her bravery of challenging a new mom (myself) because everyone knows first time moms don’t take unsolicited advice well. She also was not shy and very brave at making new friends.

My mom was brave when she took out a student loan for me to attend my dream school — the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She wanted me to be brave and reach my dreams. I dreamed of being a writer. I am a writer today.

What I considered her bravest moment before the virus was coming to the United States from the Philippines, leaving her parents, all her siblings and extended family behind, not knowing a single person to chase the American Dream. While a piece of her heart was always in the Philippines, she loved living in this country. She became an American citizen in 1989 and became a member of this country whose national anthem proudly proclaims it “as the land of the free and home of the brave.”

Now it is my time to be brave and it is by my faith I am able to get through these days. The hardest part is that I will miss her terribly and I get very, very emotional that she cannot be here physically to watch my two-year-old daughter grow up. I find it does take a lot of bravery to truly believe in the Gospel message of the Resur­rection. One day I will see her again but now I am overcome with a great sense of grief. I write this in the hope that it gives others some consolation that their loved ones were brave in their fight, which many had to fight alone in a hospital bed.

In the upcoming days as my family and I continue to grieve, please pray that we are brave. My family is also praying for the entire world. May we be brave enough to learn many lessons that this never happens again and somehow bring the world back to what God had intended when he made creation.