I didn’t go to her funeral.
I was trying to avoid pain.  How selfish of me, I am so ashamed. 
But, last night in church I found her program and took it home with me.  As I read it this morning, the tears streamed down my face.
I loved her so much, this small elderly woman with the face that loved me back with God’s own love.  She always had sweet and kind words for me and she always had a loving touch for the children.  Toward the end she was only in church sporadically, but thank the Lord I always ran to the nursery to get baby Caleb so that he too could receive her special touch.  How she loved my babies, how she loved to talk of God!  I can hear her voice praying so passionately with me on the few Wednesday night prayer meetings in which we were able to pray together.  How I remember her words as she encouraged me to be a godly wife and a mother.
She was so humble. 
Here is her little biography, written by her son and published in her funeral program as a testimony to what God can do with a woman’s sacrificial life:

Ana Soledade grew up in the humble circumstances of rural Portugal in the 1920’s.  Obidos, Portugal was a beautiful land of patchwork fields, oxcarts, threshing floors and old Moorish castles.  For Ana, however, it was a world of endless toil.  Work made her a domestic for the rich, a field hand in the olive groves and even a mine laborer who hauled gypsum ore from deep in the earth.  But she was also a woman of dreams.  Eventually her dreams blossomed out of her indefatigable spirit and she found herself holding passage to America.

Her indomitable spirit and deep faith in God demanded of her a high aspiration in this new America of hope.  Encouraged by the kindness of friends in Pennsylvania who taught her English, she established herself in the Hartford area in 1949.  She now had with her a partner-her long awaited husband, Samuel.  Together they started a family and worked the hard life of raising children and scraping together an economy in post war America.

Their great love bore babies, first Samuel and David, then quickly Daniel and later Thome.  By 1954, the woman who loved children so deeply now had an apartment on Main Street bursting with kids.  Mom couldn’t be happier.  You see for this woman sacrificing for her children was as natural as making coldo verde.  There was no personal sacrifice too great for her children’s health, schooling, clean clothes, or even just fun.  There were birthdays, and holidays, times at the beach and work in the yard.  The idea was always to be just together.  Us boys were the lucky beneficiaries of having an angel of a mother.  To complete the family picture with the feminine, God surprised us all, but especially dad, with a baby girl.  She was our special little princess and mom named her Judite.  How mom loved this child and cultivated in her a legacy of love by instructions and sensibilities.

For mom it was always family, always home, always love that mattered.  Her heart was so big.  Only God knew how great a love she shared with us.  We understood by glimpses her love in the joy that beamed in her bright smile or the passion that cried out from the tears of her prayers in our behalf.  Oh mother, for us, your family, you are the reality of love and the poetry of life lived for your beloved.

The years passed quickly.  Mom basked in the accomplishments of her children.  Her grandchildren brought a new cycle of family life and joy to her big heart.  Mom and dad appreciated some of the special experiences of life together.  They went on trips to Israel, Hawaii, and spent many winters in Florida serving God through mission societies in which they volunteered.  The years passed and together mom and dad saw the milestones of their lives together go by, 40  years, 50 years of marriage.  Then mom was eighty years old!  We loved our darling so much, but we saw her slipping from our lives as her body weakened.  Her heart began to get sick.  This August day in 2006, together as a family, we are saying goodbye to the angel of our lives the greatest good that God ever brought us.  We share these memories with you because they are all about love and love was her heart.