‘She wasn’t given the same respect.’ Two concurrent Fresno funerals, two sets of rules?
Funerals are for the living, not the dead.
My own mother said those words to me shortly before she passed in 2005. Listening to the pain and anger in the voices of two Fresno-area school teachers who recently lost their mom, their meaning really hit home.
Over the past year, the COVID-19 virus has caused or contributed to the deaths of 1,585 Fresno County residents. One of them was Lucy Vasquez.
Vasquez was 76 when she passed in late January at Community Regional Medical Center. She sounds like a wonderful person. People describe her with words such as “cheerful” and “generous” and use phrases like “cared deeply for others” and “a rock for her entire extended family.”
In normal times, Vasquez’s entire family and many friends could have each mourned her passing by attending her rosary service and funeral. The pandemic made that impossible. With Fresno County in the purple tier on the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy, Vasquez’s Feb. 4 rosary at Chapel of the Light funeral home was limited to 25 guests. The following day at St. Peter’s Cemetery, only 15 were permitted at her burial.
“It made me really upset,” said Leticia Ruelas, one of Lucy Vasquez’s five surviving adult children. “I was grieving my mom — and when I got there most of my family wasn’t allowed in.
“My brother wasn’t able to attend. My nieces and nephews weren’t able to attend. We had a relative come from Florida, and he wasn’t allowed inside the viewing or the cemetery. Family members from Modesto, Merced and Lemoore were also not allowed to go.”
Ruelas understands the funeral home and cemetery must adhere to COVID-19 guidelines established by the California Department of Public Health.
But are those rules being equally enforced? Or do some families get special treatment?
As it so happens, the rosary and burial ceremony for Lucy Vasquez were held at the same time and place as those for Fresno County correctional officer Randy Villalobos Jr., who died in a Jan. 22 motorcycle accident. And guess what? Attendance at the correctional officer’s services was far greater.
“There were more than 100 people at his funeral and at least 50 or 75 at the rosary the night before,” Ruelas said. “Nothing against the officer, but how does his death mean more than my mom’s?”
“I just felt like she was cheated,” added Yvette Vasquez, Leticia’s older sister. “It was heartbreaking to know some people are treated differently.”
Cemetery, funeral home dispute family’s account
Officials at the funeral home and cemetery don’t dispute there were more people at Villalobos’ services and expressed sympathy for Lucy Vasquez’s still-grieving family members.
However, they also insist family members don’t know all the facts.
Carlos Rascon, director of St. Peter’s Cemetery, and Mike Rabara, general manager of Chapel of the Light funeral home, insist only 15 mourners were allowed to attend Villalobos’ graveside burial ceremony — in accordance with health department regulations.
The larger crowd Ruelas and Vasquez saw (Rascon agrees it was 100 people) were for a separate committal service that took place at a “football-field sized” outdoor pavilion with ample room for social distancing.
Rascon admitted the outdoor pavilion is not generally made available. It has been used three times during the pandemic, he said, each time for a law enforcement or correctional officer whose departments coordinate with cemetery staff to accommodate a larger crowd without disrupting other funerals.
“Everything is very organized and structured when it’s the sheriff’s or CHP because they’re law enforcement,” Rascon said. “Large families aren’t organized and they want to be graveside, so it doesn’t work. That’s the problem.”
Rabara, meanwhile, disputed the contention that “at least 50 or 75” people attended Villalobos’ rosary service, which was held inside the funeral home’s large chapel that seats 125. (Lucy Vasquez’s rosary was in the small chapel that seats 50.)
While it’s true there was a larger turnout for Villalobos’ service, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims among those in attendance, Rabara said an employee stationed at the entrance and exit door was responsible for ensuring no more than 25 people were inside either chapel at any time. But as soon as someone left the building, someone else was permitted to “rotate in.”
“(Members of Vasquez’s family) were made aware they could rotate as well,” Rabara said. “I don’t know if they did.”
COVID restrictions tough to accept & enforce
This is one of those situations where it’s impossible to choose sides. On one hand, you feel for those who experience the loss of a loved one during a time when a deadly virus restricts the normal mourning process.
But what about those with the job of enforcing health regulations on the grieving? That’s a brutal spot to be in, too.
Lucy Vasquez’s daughters remain angry over what transpired (Leticia Ruelas: “You can never give us back that day. You can never do it over”) and no explanation from the cemetery or funeral home will ever suffice. It’s their right to feel that way.
Perhaps me writing about Lucy Vasquez, a longtime Central Unified School District teacher’s aide, attendance clerk and liaison to migrant families, makes more people aware of her warm, caring soul and how much she was loved.
Yvette Vasquez recalled the time her mother took $200 earmarked for household bills and gave it to a farmworker family “with seven kids, no food and no blankets.”
“She thought the money would go a lot further with them,” added Yvette, a 30-year teacher in the Fresno Unified and Central districts.
Sixteen years later, I don’t remember much about my mother’s funeral. What I remember is her love. Hopefully the aggrieved family members of Lucy Vasquez, and everyone else mourning a similar loss during COVID-19, can someday arrive at the same place.
This story was originally published March 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
