This past weekend I attended the funeral services of Martha Valderrama Knowles, a dear family friend of some eight decades. She died of stomach cancer.My mother and aunt were childhood friends with Martha and her twin sister, Malena in Mexico City. As they tell it, the Valderrama twins and my mom and aunt, the Garcia de Mendoza girls, would roller skate around the neighborhood after school. Their route took them up and down Laurel Street in the Colonia Santa Maria La Ribera, a residential neighborhood in the heart of Mexico City. It was the 1940’s.
My mother’s family lived less than half a block away from the Valderrama family. Both families adored music, culture and the arts. My grandfather, a philosophy professor at UNAM and the Director of the Conservatory of Music, was Malena and Martha’s music teacher. Malena is a talented pianist in Boulder. She credits my grandfather with inspiring her musical career.
The girls were not only schoolmates, but also their parents were friends too. I have heard about those evenings so long ago when the two families would gather at one of the homes to eat dinner and to listen to recorded music of the great masters: Chopin, Bach, Mozart, etc. In my mind I can see the sepia-toned image of my grandparents, my mother, my aunt and uncle as children along with Valderrama family all sitting around the hi-fi stereo listening to records.
Life took my mother and the Valderrama sisters to the United States where they married American men and raised American kids. In the late 1960’s, Malena and Martha were living in Colorado when my uncle in Mexico was shopping around for a graduate school in the US. He decided to study physics at the University of Colorado because of the quality of the physics program and his childhood friends from Mexico were now living in Colorado. It was at this time that my mother and father decided to leave Texas and move to Colorado so that we could live closer to my uncle and the Valderrama sisters. So that is why my mom, dad and I moved to Colorado from Texas in December 1967. The two families continued to gather in the US. The venue was different, but the appreciation for music and culture remained the same. I remember visiting Malena’s family in Boulder or Martha’s family in Denver. There would be a little bit of operatic singing and lots of beautiful piano music and always the laughter. One Christmas, I remember we ended the evening with a little limbo dancing (a popular Mexican Christmas tradition…just kidding).
Martha sang Bésame Mucho, a classic Latin love ballad, at our wedding in September 2000 in San Francisco. Malena accompanied Martha on the piano. The sisters brought down the house. There were audible gasps from the audience followed by cheers of “bravo” after the song. The clip of Martha and Malena singing at my wedding was played this past weekend at Martha’s service. Audible gasps of appreciation from the funeral audience were again heard at the end of the song.
At our wedding, our officiant said Bésame Mucho would be the lullaby that would cradle the next generation. Bésame Mucho is now our family theme song. When Emma was a baby, I would pull her out of her bath, swaddle her in a warm towel and rock her in my arms as I sang Bésame Mucho. It was our little ritual. To this day, I still help Emma out of the shower, throw a towel around her and try to cuddle and sing a few lines of Bésame Mucho before she’s off and running.
At Martha’s memorial, Gerald, one of Martha’s sons, spoke of his mother’s love for the United States. He told the story how she would say (in a thick Mexican accent), “I love this country and I love working for the government.” Indeed, she worked for a government office in Denver for some 25 years. Lyndon, her other son, told another story when she recently sang the Star Spangled Banner at the grocery store on the 4th of July just to get all the employees and customers into a patriotic spirit. In addition, to her patriotism, Martha valued hard work, education and the discipline to achieve goals. She would always proudly say (again with the accent) “This is my son, Lyndon, the lawyer” in a way that captures all the optimism and glory of the American dream.
This weekend was a celebration of Martha’s life, of friendships that span decades, and reconnecting with the values of culture, education, and discipline that are both Mexican and American.
Here are the words in English to Bésame Mucho by Consuelo Velazquez
Kiss me, kiss me a lot, as if tonight was the last time.
Kiss me, kiss me a lot, because I fear losing you, to lose you again.
I want to have you very close, to see myself in your eyes, to see you next to me. Think that perhaps tomorrow I already will be far, very far from you.
Kiss me, kiss me a lot, as if tonight was the last time. Kiss me, a lot, because I fear losing you, to lose you later.
