Maria A. Rodriguez

1951 to 2024

Maria is now resting at peace and reuniting with her loved ones. Maria was a daughter, sister, mother, aunt, cousin, and friend.

Maria was born and raised in Jalisco, Mexico, and she was proud to have grown up in "El Valle," a hometown that created lasting and vivid memories she held dear throughout her life. Whether it was the smells and feel of making tortillas with her mother, Silvina, or watching the shimmer of the harmonica when her grandfather taught her to play, she loved to reminisce about her early life there.  She often recounted how her father, Isidoro, taught her to hunt, fish, and grow food for the family. She fondly described the swaying palm trees and the lively community gatherings in the town square gazebo. Instead of quickly completing her chores of sweeping the local church, she would often stare up in awe at the wooden and stone architecture.  She was a lover of details and all things beautiful.

In the early 1970s, her family moved to Fallbrook, California where she would make a home for almost fifty years. As the second oldest of eleven siblings, Maria helped to support them and began working at a local factory where she made medical equipment. Soon after coming to the US, a family friend introduced her to Santos, and they began a two-year courtship through letter writing. They married and started a family, eventually having four children.

Throughout her life, Maria worked multiple jobs to support her family including delivering newspapers and working as a caregiver to the elderly for 30 years.  She loved volunteering at her children's schools.

Even while working three jobs, cooking for, and minding four rowdy children, she would stay busy with useful and artistic hobbies while singing along to mariachi music. She was a gifted painter in watercolors and acrylics, and she would also take the time to craft custom Halloween costumes and sew her own curtains.  She crocheted countless intricate doilies, embroidered pillows, and knitted many blankets.

Whenever Maria possibly could, she would take it upon herself to help friends of the family. Through careful thrifting and repurposing, she would find ways to furnish the home of a struggling family or reach out to the community to rally support for others. Years later, many friends of her children would stop and talk to share a memory of when she impacted them.

She is preceded in death by many relatives including her mother and Santos.

Her six grandchildren will deeply miss their entertaining Abuelita.

Her heart stayed in the rolling green fields and streams of El Valle in Mexico. We will always love and remember her honesty, nostalgia, generosity, and resilient spirit.