Teacher Roxana

Last week was a bit of a sad week. Matthew has lost the second person he loved in his life due to death. Besides Tito Daniel who passed away almost 2 1/2 years ago, his beloved teacher Roxana has passed away. Roxana has been a part of his life for the last 2 1/2 years as his teacher in his last year of pre-K and then again as his kindergarten teacher last year. In addition to that, he had gone to English classes (not necessarily for the actual English part but the daycamp type activities they did) for the last 2 1/2 years every Saturday for 3 hours and loved it! He never once complained about going to those classes on Saturday and actually if there weren´t classes occasionally for whatever reason, he was a little bummed that there were no classes with Roxana. Sometimes he was the only one who showed up to class but that didn´t bother him at all because he always had fun with Roxana. She taught him how to read and write when he was only five years old. Two things SO important in life that I could never be more grateful to her. I remember one day thinking they were just practicing putting syllables together and the next day he was reading the first grade reading material in kindergarten. I don´t know when or how it happened but she taught them to read and write before I even realized it.

Roxana started losing weight for no apparent reason earlier this year and she even told me herself that she didn´t know why because she was eating the same and nothing had changed. As the months went by she was still losing weight and began having stomach pains and wasn´t able to eat like she should. She had started getting some testing done at the hospital but they weren´t finding much. Later she was having trouble keeping food down and not able to stop throwing up. She was from San Jose so had no family here and she lived alone with her cat. Unfortunately she died alone and four days passed without anyone realizing it. When they found her she was dead and her cat was curled up next to her. Such a sad way to die. Her mother had come here and told her to go back to San Jose with her until she got better but I don´t think Roxana really knew how bad it was going to be. She was only about 47 years old.

Matthew was in a TaeKwondo tournament on Saturday and won a gold medal. We had talked about the fact that Roxana was now in heaven with Tito Daniel and that we were sure they were watching the tournament which they had never gotten to see when they were alive. I said that probably Roxana and Tito Daniel´s friends were all watching cheering him on. Any time Matthew had a tournament on Saturdays and had to miss English class, she always asked about how it went when she saw us on Monday. Matthew told me after the fight when he was sitting on my lap with his gold medal around his neck that he said a little prayer to God and to Roxana before the fight when he was in the warm up room waiting his turn. We decided that this gold medal was definitely for her!

Today her sister from San Jose came into my store with her husband because someone had told her that Matthew´s mother was the owner. She asked me if I was Matthew´s mother and I said yes and she said she was Roxana´s sister. I hugged her and we talked a little about Roxana and how important she was to me and to Matthew. She wanted to thank Dani for helping her many times when she needed it and for giving her the sick leave permissions so she could try and get better.

As sad as we are, we are glad that Roxana is in a better place and no longer has any pain or suffering. We will miss her so much......

Pictures to follow tomorrow!