Their Season of Sorrow : Rosie and Dad Cling to Each Other as They Return to an Empty House for Christmas

Jose Garcia maneuvers a mop around a display of poinsettias and wrapping paper in a Pasadena supermarket. At 2:30 a.m. the night-shift custodian practically has the place to himself.

There are floors to polish and groceries to stock, but the sight of a Christmas toy bin catches him short. Garcia begins to sob and walks toward a row of shopping carts. He leans against the metal grid as he tries to regain his composure.

Most of the time, he maintains a cheerful facade--but at 2:30 a.m. he admits he is tormented by grief for his family. “On the outside, people think I’m fine,” he says. “But I’m dying inside.”

This is a season when families gather, and he and his daughter feel lost without theirs.

Last year, Garcia shopped not only for Rosie but also for his sons, Tony, 15; Richie, 10; Ruben, 8, and Joey, 3, and his wife, Gina, 34.

“We all would put up the Christmas tree and the house would smell so good. The boys especially would be running around, making noise, laughing and trying to figure out where I had hidden their gifts.

“The kids never knew that I used to hide their things in the trunk of my car,” he says, smiling. “I would take their presents with me everywhere.” On Christmas morning, while the boys and Rosie were still sleeping, Garcia and his wife would sneak into their rooms and put the gifts on their beds, a family tradition.

But this Christmas, Garcia’s trunk is empty. His house is silent, unless the television is on or Rosie is playing Nintendo. There are no brothers chasing each other, doors slamming behind them. No giggling or quarreling. And in a house that was once filled with music, no accordians are being played, no guitars are being strummed.

For the Garcias, this is a season of sorrow.

In the accident, Rosie suffered third-degree burns over 70% of her body. After her release from Sherman Oaks Community Hospital in August, the Garcias spent several months with his sister, Alexandria, in Gardena.

They wanted to have Thanksgiving dinner at home, so they finally made the traumatic move back to their small, gray stucco house in Valinda. Before their return, Rosie and her father would check on the house from time to time, but could never sleep inside it. The memories were too painful. Garcia says he would imagine his wife in the kitchen and his sons playing their musical instruments, and he would start to cry.

One thing that helped soften the transition was that the house was being remodeled--a project begun before the trip to Mexico. The remodeling continues, but some things haven’t changed. Garcia still sleeps in the bed he and his wife shared.

However, Rosie’s room has been repainted a soft blue and she is getting new furniture. “And on the walls, I want to put posters of animals--dogs and cats, especially,” she says.

She takes a visitor to Tony’s bedroom, which is filled with baseball and accordion trophies. He has more than 50, says Rosie, who likes to talk the most about her oldest brother.

She brings out one of his accordions and begins to play. She hasn’t played in at least five years, she says, because she lost interest, much to her father’s displeasure. But now she feels her way through Christmas carols and Mexican folks songs. She plays “Jingle Bells” eight times.

Garcia pokes his head in the room, then returns, smiling, carrying his guitar. He says he hasn’t played since the accident. Now, father and daughter play together: “Silent Night,” one of Tony’s favorite songs.

Rosie underwent six weeks of intensive care at the Sherman Oaks burn center, and could barely walk or lift a glass of water. Now, she has been taken off all medication, although she still wears compression garments that prevent her skin from scarring and swelling and she must apply Vitamin E oil to her body.

She works with a tutor twice a week and will probably start at Workman High School in January.

That pleases both her father and her physician, Dr. Richard Grossman, director of the burn center. Going to school is “one of her biggest hurdles because she will be leaving the safe cocoon she has built with her father,” the doctor says.

Rosie tells her dad she’s a little scared about going back. She’d rather return when her hair is longer--it grazes the top of her ears now. “Before the explosion I was a part of a lot of things (in school). After the explosion, everything seems to have changed. Sometimes things are scary and hard to understand. Like Thanksgiving was real hard because we would always be together and we weren’t. And now Christmas.”

Next week, relatives will come to spend the day with them. Garcia has put up a tree with lots of twinkling lights, at Rosie’s request. A few gifts for her cousins and grandparents are waiting under the tree.

But father and daughter dread Dec. 25.

“Imagine,” says Rosie, “if someone didn’t have their mother or brothers with them any more. Imagine that on Christmas Day.”

Rosie not only misses her mother and brothers--she also misses her father. Garcia did not work for several months after the accident and devoted himself to helping his daughter recuperate. But two weeks ago he returned to his midnight-to-9 a.m. job.

His parents, who live in Tijuana, have moved in temporarily to look after Rosie at night. And his sister, Alexandria, visits every Sunday after the Garcias have paid their respects at the family graves and attended Mass at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Rowland Heights.

“I hate leaving Rosie every night,” Garcia says, but at least she isn’t alone.

Sometimes he thinks he hears his sons laughing or calling out “Papacito.” And he misses his morning conversations over coffee with his wife.

“Why did this happen to us?” he asks himself constantly. “Sometimes, when Rosie and I are sitting together, she says, ‘Papi, my life is ruined.’ I see that she sometimes wants to give up . . . she is putting off returning to school. I try desperately to encourage her, but she says, ‘Why bother? My brothers and mother are gone.’

“I know how she feels because I feel it too. Most of the time I don’t feel like doing anything. I don’t feel motivated, I don’t feel love for life. It’s not fair. But I also know that we have to move forward, no matter how hard it is,” he says.

So does Rosie. She is kneeling on the front lawn showing off new additions to the family: Eight kittens romping over each other and teasing the family dog, Nova. Her mission--which she has delayed for several weeks--is to find new homes for the animals. “I don’t like separating them from their mother,” she says. But she has a plan--she will give them away two at a time. “At least two kittens won’t feel like they’re all alone in the world.”