[T3] Leon is mourning

[Greg Merritt <gregm@vwtype3.org>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 00:06:55 -0700
From: leonmtz <leonmtz@inertext.com>
To: sandiego@vwtype3.org, type3@vwtype3.org
Cc: janellerussell@adelphia.net
Subject: [T3] Leon is mourning 

This e-mail was made for my coworkers but I will forward this to you
guys too. Kind of hard to write too much again. Her picture can be
seen in the San Diego Type 3 site www.type3vw.com in the pictures
section look in the May 29th carshow section she is the little lady
in the denim jacket, my car is the 69 square with the brows , she
is pictured there too. Those VW folks that knew her, know that
the pictures do not do justice at all but these are of my beloved.
When she was well , she never missed going with me to any VW event.
READ E-MAIL BELOW.

LEON

*************************************************************
I will take a little time off, maybe a week or two to bury
my wife and to get some quality crying time out of the way.

We were married for 11 years, never a single fight or cold
shoulder or mean look, people cannot believe that but it was true.
I could not stand being away from her on travel, she could not
stand me being away , she was my home, she was ready for
the American Citizenship, she wanted to be an American so
she can travel everywhere I went, I also wanted her too.
She told me that when she heard me coming home , it was like
a party was going to start, she said she always got butterflies
in her during that moment.

This a small blurb to me but to you it may seem long
This is a little eulogy for my wife to you who knew her
and those who did not. Especially those who sit around me
knew how much I loved her, I would ramble about her
accomplishments and her infinite dedication to me.
Please do not hug or mention anything about my wife to me
when I am at work, I wish to be just working and nothing else.
I breakdown enough as it is.


 My wife Teresa passed away on Saturday , I cannot say
she passed away peacefully. She spent 40 hours suffocating
and screaming for medicine and finally just writing down for more
morpine. She said she always knew that she would die suffering
like Jesus but that she was a coward now and that she wanted more
medicine to not feel terrible, morphine seemed not to work.
Doctors lost hope on Friday and let her know she was
going to die soon. Doctors were amazed that she was still lucid
almost towards the end, even though she had massive amounts of
morphine in her.  Her heart beat at 200 times per second
for 3 days, doctors said no one could last any amount of time
at that rate , she did all towards the end. I was with her
for 60 hours next to her bedside holding her hand tightly, all the time
she would tell me that she was getting close to being better
in heaven, she was not afraid or ever was afraid of death but of
suffering. For real , I never knew anyone who was so calm about
facing death, she faced it many times and this to her was just
another though it was the last. She knew she was going to die at 33 she
missed the mark by 11 days , before she married me , she told me
she would die at 33 and I needed to accept that, she was always worried
before marriage and all the way toward the end that I would suffer
for her, she would tell me that if this happens, remember that she would
be in heaven directly, she said she was told this, she was a mystic,
she always had a burning candle in front of the image of Jesus, every
day for decades , still, that is a differet story.

Her disease is a mystery to the doctors, she was diagnosed with
Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. This disease would hit people
over 70 who smoked sometime during their life and would last 4 to
6 years to develop, it took her 11 days after her 34th birthday.
She contracted it last November at an accelerated pace.
She had many health problems that were corrected during my marriage
to her. Throughout her life most of her problems seemed like
enigma to the doctors , she was an enigma, she was even tested
genetically for months. Every serious health problem was strange,
without cause or connection, nothing seemed related, some would just
disapear.

She said, she was carrying a cross for the sins of her family
12 brothers and sisters and that she carried it happily to help out god.

Early in her life, nothing came easy to her, I will not go into
too many details, it would take all day to write it and it would
be too painful for me, no sad story would ever top what indignaties,
pain, sorrow she had to bear before we married.

 She was and orphane at 13 and lived alone in a depressing apartment
in Tijuana, it was even a hobble to Tijuana standards, she worked
for her rent and school, her objective was to be a chemical engineer,
she did not wish to be ignorant and poor like the people around her.
She suffered from malnutrition during that time. Alone she lived a very
moralistically rigid life , went to church every Sunday to pray
that her brothers and sisters would be better people. In her
apartment she taught herself english, painting in the Neo Classical
style, Classical guitar etc... she had a very high IQ , her favorite
music was classical even though she tolerated my Metalica, she even
told me turn it all the way up if I wanted.

 After I met her I fell in love with all of her but I would tell her
that I was mostly in love with her brain and soul. We both saved
ourselves until marriage, I was 30 , finally got laid , (odd for
an ex punk band leader of 'Satanic Steel' ). She was my first
girlfriend, yes its true pathetic. She was the woman that
built me up from severe trailer trashness, had the broken down
trailer and all, paid no rent though, fed the dogs garbage
and the facilties was in the shed in back with the humanly fumes,
drove a very rusted 51 Dodge pickup.

She steered and inspired me to have the job I have now , she
said I can accomplish anything and that she would help me.
She architectually and structuarally designed and oversaw the
construction of my house in Mexico, she built some of the furniture
, she loved her router, she never finished the fancy kitchen cabinets,
or the tile in the bathroom or her dream walk in closet, her
spiral stairway... She wanted
me to build a 6 car garage so I can work on my trucks and cars.
She plastered and textured the inside of the house and added decorative
arches and ceilings all with her hands. She designed and helped weld
all of the wrought iron in my house. She was planning to have
workers build a retaining wall to our newly aquired back/side yard so
she can buid her pool (she had books on building them) she loved
doing 2 hours of laps in the morning before meeting her friends
for coffee and cheesecake at a fancy place. She loved cooking for me
and plants. She wanted to learn to paint her car so she had me buy
special equipment and practiced on some old car doors. She loved
to lay in her hammock in the yard , she loved babies and wanted a very
large family, she could not have children and wanted to adopt a dozen.
She was and expert tailor and would make wedding dresses and clothes
for her friends , she made clothes for me all of the time and I would
were them to work, no one knew, she even made me a suit and a leather
jacket. She had so many talents and the list of these would keep growing.

There was absolutely nothing she would deny me , nothing, she was game
for anything I wanted or did. She always wanted me to buy the best, no
price ceiling for anything. She would always tell me, that buying cheap
was trouble and would cost more in the long run, the best always last the
longest, when I bought my PDA for 750.00 she asked if it was one of the
best to me, she did not care about the price as long as it would be useful
for years to come. She told me to take care of my parents with no cost
spared, that my parents were like her parents, my parents felt the same way
about her .

In front of my sisters, my mom would seriously say 'this
is the good daughter, why can't be more like her ?' , they would
respond, 'there is no way anyone can be like her' not even close, don't
expect us to even copy once facet of her'. After saying this, my wife
would blush and my sisters would hug her, this was when she was not
even sick. She truely loved my parents like ones she never had , she would
do anything for them . She was loved greatly by my parents and they would
deny her nothing , like a daughter. She convinced me to buy a house for
my folks because they should live with more dignity than the children,
they were getting old and that one day I would not have them and would
regret never doing more, parents should be one of the most important
people in this life, so I bought them a big 5 bedroom house, my brother,
sister and they do the payments. My parents and some of my brothers and
sisters saw her daily.

My wife believed living each day as it was the last. My father was always
amazed that she could do so much of everything in a day . My dad
would laugh at her when she would be covered with plaster and paint, with
saw dust in her hair carrying plants out of the car. My dad remembers her
saying , 'I got his favorite food in the oven, the plaster and wood glue is
drying , do you like these plants ? Got to go, he is almost here , got to
wash up.'

She had no enemies , everyone loved her , children loved her , children's
parents always would say ' my kid never did that for me or for anyone'.
Every friend (female or male) she had would say that the was the sister
they never had, even if they had sisters, they depended on her input or
insite for big steps in their life, they valued her wisdom.

I will forever miss her smells of paint she was making , yes , she made
her own paint and colors, her cooking , her sweet voice , her support
of everything, will miss every night when she prepared our bath in the
giant bath tub she bought for two. I will miss..... Her .

What I wrote is actually a little about her, there is just so much.


I do not regrete not doing everything for her in our 11 years of marriage,
I did everything in my power and beyond to make her happy she did too,
I really think she was a modern day saint.

She will be buried this week in Tijuana, where she was born, her services
will be held in the same church she was Baptized, had her First Communion,
Baptizm Confirmation and where we were married. She always said jokingly
since before marriage that she wanted her funeral services to be held
there when she died around 33 years of age, she told me again in
writing , just before she died.  The same priest she had
for all her sacraments will be performing her church services.

Here is the last picture I took of her in February with my video camera,
I wanted to catch her essence when she got up from bed in the morning,
I chased her around the house because she was reluctant but finally stopped
and smiled. She was a tiny woman at 4 ft 9 in 100 lbs, very girly and
feminine .


I will see you all at work in a week or two


LEON MARTINEZ