Dios te bendiga, mami

On April 22, 2026 at 10:38 PM, my mom passed peacefully. Here's a little about the remarkable woman who made me who I am.

At 10:30 last night, my mom breathed her last. She’d been fading for days. For the hour before, my dad, sister, and I were with her, reminiscing. We sang the lullaby she sang to us, and then my dad (a Catholic Deacon) read the Commendation of the Dead while my sister and I held her and each other. She passed in the middle of the prayers. We could not have asked for a more peaceful death.

Socorro Milagros Vicenty Sanchez Lumbert was 86. She was named for Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and never did anyone live up to their name so well. In Puerto Rico, she worked as a social worker and nursing assistant to her brother, the doctor, until she fell in love with a Navy man, married, and moved stateside. She was fearless, walking into homes to defuse domestics when the police refused to enter and navigating some of the most dangerous neighborhoods of Cieba armed with only a steel nail file.

On the mainland in Pueblo, Colorado, she was mother to two girls and all their friends, many of whom credit her and my dad for showing them what a true, loving, stable family was like. She was a substitute teacher for Spanish, and kids said they learned more from her on her substitute days than from weeks with their regular teachers. She returned to social work with the developmentally disabled before retiring to be a full-time grandma and volunteer at the church with her husband, the deacon.

She was a notorious shopper and deal-seeker, but was always buying with someone else in mind: the church, the poor, the “little girls down the street.” She supplied many churches with holiday decorations, gave many poor people amazing Christmases, and gifted innumerable children with her generosity (and love for a bargain).

They moved to Florida to be closer to their daughter (me). By then, dementia was taking hold. It was her silly time, but even then, she was a Spanish teacher, reviewing numbers, opposites…and profanity! (We had to know how to spell the cuss words, after all.)

Three weeks before she died, she had a sudden downturn, and we prepared for the worst. Then she not only rallied, but the dementia went away! We had two weeks where she conversed with us in English and Spanish, spoke to people on the phone, and was generally clear-headed. It was a miracle and a gift.

I’ll miss my mom, but I know she will be greeted in heaven with many hugs and “job well done.”

Dios te bendiga, mami, y gracias por todos.