05/13/2025
ELIANA MARGARITA MARK VILLAR I say her name every Mother’s Day. I can’t believe it has been so many years when I wrote this.
My mother died today. I feel guilty that I did not call or see her enough. She was so proud of me but I am not sure she knew how proud I was of her. She and my father scrimped and saved to put me through college and medical school. They came to all my high school football and lacrosse games, but she missed many of my college games. Decades later she revealed that she could not afford clothing suitable to attend. She never complained. In fact she went to night school for eight years to become a teacher.
She graduated the same year I graduated from medical school. We were so proud of each other!
Her first job was second graders in New York City. On the first day she stayed late to work on the next days plan. A security guard found her. “”Are you crazy, you could get hurt here” and escorted her out to safety. Her class was uncontrollable due to a little chunky bully. She grabbed him by the shirt and pinned him up against the wall, told him to cut the crap, then led him back to his seat. Order was restored. From then on the class viewed her as leader of the gang. We often joked, “do that today and you’d be doing time in prison.”
On the streets of New York, as a teenager, she blackened the eye of a bully that beat up her little brother. The boy’s father came to her apartment with the bruised bully in tow. “Look what your daughter did to my son”, he screamed at her father. Grandpa’s eyes bulged, and a large vein on his forehead engorged, as he looked at the young man and replied, ”If a little girl did that to my son, I would be embarrassed to let anyone know.” The man left, slapping his son in the back of the head.
She was a tomboy, jumping across rooftops, latching on to vehicles on roller skates, and protecting her little brother and sister. Yet she was beautiful and innocent looking.
When harassed, she would approach an Irish police officer in a perfect Irish brogue in a defenseless tone, “that boy is bothering me sir“. End of bothersome boy.
Mom spoke French, Spanish, and English flawlessly. She took me to Spain by ship when I was 8 years old. We zigzagged from Gibraltar to Madrid then stayed with grandpa on my father’s side, in a small town, Santander. Dad came up for a week and they went to Paris while I continued at the Hacienda. It was a grand 4-month adventure for a boy of 8 shared with a mother who inspired me to dream big and share her thirst for knowledge. She encouraged, “find something you love, and strive to be the best at it.”
At 35 I was a general surgeon, trauma surgeon, and plastic surgeon. Mom called, “When are you going to get a job, already?” But mom you told me to find something I love and be the best at it. She laughed, ‘I must have forgotten the other important secret of life, GET A JOB.”
A few months ago, I wrote an article about how my mother and father sacrificed and inspired me to be the man I am today in Around Town Magazine. Father was 93 and mom 88. On a Monday when the magazine arrived, I FED-EXed a few copies over night to my parents in New York. That night I got a call from dad. “ Your mother is babbling incoherently and stumbling around the house”. Put her on the phone I insisted. She did not know who I am, and her speech was impaired. I hung up and called the Long Island Fire Department to pick her up and get her to the hospital for a possible stroke. I thought, all these years I never told them how much they inspired me. My character, my integrity, my thirst to absorb the world around me, the genetic gifts they bestowed on me and the opportunities to make maximum use of them, the ability to wake up every morning eager to go to work because I love what I do, the opportunity to make a living by helping my fellow man instead of taking, all I owe to them. Now mom would never know, because I procrastinated.
My mother was hospitalized near death. Fortunately she was diagnosed with carbon monoxide poisoning and recovered. She got to read the article. I wept with relief.
My parents always told us they loved us and I have always done the same for my children and grandchildren. It is too late after death.
My father said he does not know if there is a God, but if there is He is a God of mercy. Live your life by treating others the way you would have others treat you. If there is a God he will let you in. If there is no God, you will have lived a noble life.
Mom, Dad, and I lived as givers not takers. We are at peace either way.
Dad is 94 this December. I love you dad.
Mom and dad wanted to be cremated without fanfare. Mom will be cremated but there is an ancient belief according to John Wayne.
“If someone remembers your name, you are immortal”
ELIANA MARGARITA VILLAR MARK
We will remember your name
