Left Now to Fulfill a Mother’s Dreams

Since his wife, Rosemarie, died July 27, sleep does not come easily, if at all, for Sabino Murillo. There are times when loneliness engulfs him like deep, dark water. Thoughts without beginning or end flicker and flee like bursts of whirling wind.

He thinks about the night at the Hollywood Palladium, where he, at age 16, and Rosemarie, then 17, met and danced a quarter-century ago--about the certainty in his heart even then. He thinks about her strength and determination, about her words repeated time and again as cancer ran its swift, brutal course.

“The children,” she said. “You must take care of the children.”

When he views his life now, he sees the four of them, ranging in age from 3 to 19. Their mother’s death left a huge hole in their lives that he knows he can never fill. She was their anchor, the one they went to with questions and needs, the one who came to them with answers and constant expectation.

The older ones are beginning to see that Rosemarie, without knowing it, taught them how to go on without her. Family comes first. That is what she always said and demanded. She taught them to be and become: to be strong, always. To be accountable, always. To become better people and seek better lives. Always.

So, now, they try. Gabriel, 19, the oldest, started classes at community college this fall and is working part time to help ease the family’s financial stress. Monika, 18, returned to high school after dropping out during her mother’s illness. Lulu, 14, is the quiet one. Sometimes Sabino worries about her spending so much time alone in her room. Then there is Cecilia, 3, who still asks when her mother is coming home.

“We’ll be OK if we help each other, stick together and be there for each other,” Sabino, 42, says.

The last year has been one of precious hope and unimaginable heartbreak, the kind that changes people forever and creates new context for everything in life. It will take time to heal.

“A part of me is just dead,” Gabriel says. “That’s how I feel right now.”

Rosemarie’s mother, Epifania Maciel, whose primary language is Spanish, points to her daughter in a family photograph. Then she points to her two sons.

“Only two now,” she says, and begins to sob.

For Sabino, life has been reduced to one day at a time.

“You live these things, and you don’t understand the magnitude until after,” he says. “Now I think, and I’m still numb. I still think, ‘How can this happen?’ It’s so difficult.”

A chef at the Rainbow Bar & Grill in West Hollywood, he works five nights a week. When he arrives home in Palmdale at 4 a.m., he generally pours himself a drink. Many nights he pours more. It’s another concern, another question that has surfaced about his life.

“What am I doing?” he asks.

He is trying to become the parent he never was. It was Rosemarie who took care of the children, the shopping, the bills. She was the one who took care of the family. Even the day before she died, as Sabino lowered his head to kiss her, she reached up to straighten his collar.

Now it is left to him. Sometimes as he lies awake exhausted, he speaks to Rosemarie.

“I miss you,” he says. “I need you.”

A Youth Sets Simple Goals

Sabino was 15 years old when he came from Mexico to Los Angeles, where he stayed with his brother, Miguel. His goals were simple: to work, to make money enough to live and have fun.

Miguel was working as a busboy at the Rainbow and was able to get Sabino a job doing the same. The night he met Rosemarie, Sabino told his sister that if he ever got married, it would be to someone like her.

They went out a few times, but Rosemarie seemed less interested in a relationship than he did.

“I thought maybe she didn’t want to go out with a busboy,” Sabino says. “I was embarrassed because I spoke little English. She was in high school, and I only went to junior high in Mexico.”

He kept thinking about her even though they stopped seeing each other for more than a year. Then one night, she called him at work.

They began seeing each other again. She would stop by the Rainbow some nights and sit at the bar drinking ice water until his break, when they would talk and laugh.

Since childhood, she was capable of taking care of herself, says her brother, Vincent Maciel, who lives in Hesperia. When she would wrestle with him and brother Louis Maciel, also of Hesperia, she often was the one who would finish on top.

When she knew what she wanted, she was determined to get it, and in 1981, she knew she wanted to be with Sabino. They were married in a courthouse and lived in a tiny, mostly empty apartment in Hollywood. As the children were born, they moved into larger apartments, better neighborhoods. Then seven years ago, Rosemarie said they needed to buy a house.

“Our credit was so bad at that time,” he remembers. “We had to pay off all our bills and save for a down payment, but we did it. She always pushed me to become a better human being, to seek a better life.”

They found their new home in Palmdale, where they envisioned a more stable life for their children, a place where they could have their own rooms, a yard.

Her focus was always on children. She took classes and became a preschool teacher, a job she loved. Her dream was to earn a degree in child psychology, and for 10 years she took classes during evenings, weekends and summers. At the time of her death, she was just short of a degree.

With her own children, she stressed education, sitting with them at night until they all finished homework. If they did poorly on a test, she pushed them to work harder.

“She wanted her kids to be not just any kids,” Sabino says. “She would say, ‘You’re my son or you’re my daughter. You can’t be just like everybody else. You have to be special.’ ”

Sabino, who has worked 26 years at the Rainbow, has moved up to second chef. His brother Miguel is head chef. It’s a long commute from Palmdale, and there was a time when Rosemarie was concerned he was not spending enough time at home. But he feared a cut in pay and could not bring himself to quit his job, at the Rainbow, where he had worked so long.

He would leave for work at 3 p.m. and arrive home at 4 a.m. The children were at school by the time he woke up and were not yet home by the time he left for work.

“You’re never home to spend time with the kids,” she told him. “I don’t care about the house anymore. Forget the house. I don’t want it anymore. I want you to be home with the kids and me.”

He didn’t realize then how precious time was.

First a Lump, Then Cancer

During a routine physical in September 1998, a lump was found in Rosemarie’s breast. A biopsy and tests revealed it was benign, Sabino says. By winter, another lump appeared, and cancer was found in her breast, lungs and brain.

She had a mastectomy, followed by radiation and chemotherapy. Treatment proved effective, and for a time there was hope she would recover.

“She did pretty good for a couple months,” Sabino says. “We tried to do the same things she liked--go to the mall, shopping. She lost her hair, but she said, ‘I don’t care.’ I remember one time I mentioned to her, ‘Honey, you should buy a wig,’ and she said, ‘People don’t like how I look, they don’t have to look at me.’ ”

But in July she became ill again. Although the tumors had shrunk, fluid had formed, placing pressure on the brain. It was drained but quickly returned. By the time she was transferred to UCLA Medical Center on July 26, it was too late.

By then she was drifting in and out of consciousness. Family and friends gathered to comfort, to pray, to say goodbye to Rosemarie.

Outside her room, her brother, Vincent, 42, was waging his own battle. He couldn’t bring himself to step inside the room, to see her suffer. Family members encouraged him to speak to her, even though she was no longer conscious. He remembered his father’s death in 1984, how these same feelings kept him from saying goodbye, how much regret he has felt since. Finally he took a deep breath, slowly entered the room and stood at her side. He took her hand. “I love you,” he said. “Go in peace.”

Epifania asked Rosemarie, her only daughter, to forgive her for anything she might have done to cause her pain or grief.

Sabino, throughout the day, would lean down and tell her it was OK to let go.

“Go with God,” he said. “I’ll take care of the children.”

Still Rosemarie fought, from one breath to the next. Gabriel stood by her bed watching the heart monitor, as others sat in her room or waited in the hallway.

The stillness between breaths seemed eternal. And, finally, it was. An emptiness seized upon Gabriel as he realized she was gone. He looked at the heart monitor. Her fight was over.

Rosa Maria Murillo was buried in the same Rowland Heights cemetery where her father and other relatives were laid to rest. She was 42.

Reminders Everywhere

Not long ago, Epifania found Rosemarie’s keys wedged alongside a cushion in her living room chair. At home, Rosemarie’s writing still appears on the calendar making note of birthdays. Her clothes still hang in the closet. There are reminders everywhere.

Sabino gets out of bed every morning and kisses her picture. Sometimes he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He wanders into the garage or stares out at the backyard, where they were thinking of putting in a pool. He feels paralyzed, numb.

The family tries to keep the house clean, the way Rosemarie liked it. They pull together, borrow from one another’s strength. Sabino worries about Cecilia. On days that he works, he sees her only for a couple hours before he leaves and drops her off at her grandmother’s house, where she and Lulu spend the night.

“I have to make adjustments,” he says. “I’m not doing my job. I don’t feel like I’m doing anything for them. . . . I should get up early, take Ceci to the park, then go to work. I have to take care of my daughter.”

Maybe he should work only four nights a week, he says, but the family already feels financial strain. He spends what time he can with the children and is getting to know them in a way he never knew before.

“Eight months ago, if you would have asked him what his kids liked, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you,” Gabriel says. “Now he can. We’ve become closer.”

They wonder if time will heal, if fullness will return to their lives. One day Lulu, the quiet one, went to her father.

“A lot of people go through this,” she said. “We’re not the only ones. We have to be strong. You have to stop crying.”

The words could have come from Rosemarie, and there is the sense that a part of her lives in each of them, as they try to move forward.

For now, they cling to memories. Gabriel remembers his graduation from Palmdale High School last spring. Rosemarie, who was in the midst of cancer treatment, came up to him, a brown and white scarf covering her bald head.

“She hugged me. She was so proud of me when I graduated,” he said. “That was the best moment I’ll ever have.”

Members of the family were never the type to show physical affection or tell each other, “I love you.” But that changed during Rosemarie’s illness.

Lulu remembers going to eat at the Sizzler a few weeks before her mother’s death. It was an unremarkable moment except that they were together and happy.

Monika cherishes the engagement ring left her by Rosemarie.

And Cecilia. Someday she will understand what it means when people explain to her that her mother is with angels. But for now she thinks about the stories read to her at night, the soft lap and comforting wrap of her mother’s arms.

Where have they gone?

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Duane Noriyuki can be reached at socalliving@latimes.com.