For Catholics, November begins with All Saints Day and then All Souls Day, and it is a month to remember holy lives and pray for the faithful departed. During the COVID-19 pandemic, remembering lost loved ones has taken on special poignance and lasting sorrow. As of Nov. 3, 2021, more than 750,000 Americans had died from the coronavirus, and the rising death toll offered a reminder that those who died were people, not statistics. They were people who loved and were loved, and whose loss lingers in the hearts of their family members, friends and neighbors who still feel grief after a worldwide pandemic hit close to home.

That is the case with Lilian Rodriguez and Mirna Plazza, two sisters who both work for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. On March 1, 2021, their father, Carlos Rustrian, died of COVID-19 at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis. Four days later, his beloved wife and their mother, Maria Rustrian, also died from the coronavirus at that hospital. They were both 86, and they had been married almost 62 years.

Interviewed almost eight months later, both sisters at times had tears in their eyes or cried as they remembered their parents.

“They lived and loved together. In a way, they died together,” said Lilian Rodriguez, who like her parents and sister, immigrated to the United States from Guatemala four decades earlier. She described her parents’ life together with the Spanish phrase amor eterno – eternal love.

Lilian Rodriguez works in the archdiocese’s Facilities Management Office as a switchboard operator and office assistant, and her sister Mirna Plazza works as an account administrator in the archdiocese’s Parish and School Operations Office. Both have worked for the Catholic Church in the Washington area for many years in a variety of roles. In interviews on Oct. 21, they reflected on their parents’ lives marked by love and faith, how COVID-19 impacted their family, and how their mother and father remain close in their hearts all these months later.

The lady in the choir

Remembering how Maria and Carlos Rustrian met as young adults in Guatemala City, Lilian said, “My mom was going to Mass. She always liked to sing in the choir.” Maria lived a short walk from Mary Help of Christians Church there, and walked there to pray and attend Mass. At a Mass one day as Maria was singing in the choir, “she noticed a man was looking at her,” Lilian said. 

That turned out to be Carlos. Mirna explained, “My father went with my grandmother (to that church). He saw my mother and changed parishes to meet my mother.”

Carlos and Maria met each other at the church, later fell in love and were married there. Their daughters Lilian and Mirna were baptized in the church.

Lilian remembered how their parents were hard working people. In Guatemala, Carlos worked as a bus driver and later was a manager of a store that sold Pepsi products. Maria worked at a store at the airport that sold items from their country.

“We didn’t have much money in Guatemala, but I remember my mother and my father always shared what they had,” Mirna said. “They gave us an education and they gave us our faith,” she said, remembering how the sisters attended Catholic schools in their native country.

Their Catholic faith was the foundation of the lives of Carlos and Maria Rustrian and their family, the sisters both said.

“She (my mother) taught me to pray, and she taught me to sing,” Mirna said, remembering how her mother sang in parish choirs throughout her life. As Mirna grew up and then on into adulthood, she sang in choirs with her mother.

A family’s new home

Lilian remembered how her mother had visited the United States in the early 1970s and fell in love with the country and afterward started the application process for her and her family members to become immigrants there.

In 1981, Lilian was the first member of their immediate family to move to the United States. She was 20 then and lived with an aunt in Riverdale and stayed on a student visa and attended school to study English.

Two years later, Carlos, Maria and Mirna also moved to the United States, and they all eventually became citizens and permanent residents there. Like in Guatemala, their lives centered on their faith, their family and hard work.

Lilian married her husband Eduardo – an immigrant from Ecuador – in 1983, and they have three children, Edgar, Marybelle and Fernando. Lilian worked at Safeway and Citizens Bank of Maryland before she began working in 1998 as a switchboard operator for the archdiocese, where over the years she also worked in the tuition assistance program, the religious education office, the human resources department and the facilities office.

Mirna and her husband José have two daughters, Jessica and Michelle. She began working for the archdiocese in 1985, first helping with materials in Spanish that were being produced about the new Catechism of the Catholic Church. Over the years, Mirna also worked for the archdiocese’s Office of Social Concerns, in the advertising and business departments of the Catholic Standard and El Pregonero newspapers, for the Spanish Catholic Center, and since 1997 for the archdiocese’s Office of Finance and Administration.

When they arrived in the United States, Carlos and Maria Rustrian continued working hard. He worked in construction, and she cleaned offices. They retired in their 60s.

Remembering how her father continued his construction work as he got older, Mirna said, “It was a hard job. He did it for us.”

‘They were here for us’

A special blessing for Lilian and her family was that her parents lived with them at their home in Glenn Dale, Maryland for the past 30 years.

“They helped us in different ways,” she said. “They were taking care of all of us.”

She noted how her mother helped with the cooking and taking the children to and from the school bus stop. Her father also helped with the children, driving them to things like doctors appointments, and he helped with household chores, like taking the trash out.

To their five grandchildren and seven great-granchildren, grandma Maria was their abuelita, and grandpa Carlos was their abuelito, Lilian said.

“We knew they were here for us. My mom was like a second mom to our kids. My mom was a loving person to everybody,” she said. “…My dad was always quiet, a really, really loving person. (He was) like a big bear, ready to give you a hug when you needed it.”

Mirna agreed, saying, “My father was a big guy. He had a very good heart.” She remembered playing tag with him when she was a little girl, and how he liked to tell stories to his daughters.

She noted, “My mother was always happy. She always sang. She was singing when she was cooking. That’s why we were in the choir with her.”

Mirna and her sister went to Mass with them from the time they were little girls, and throughout their adulthood. “They always gave me the faith,” she said.

After she finished her work days, before she went home to take care of her family, Mirna had a habit of stopping by for a short visit with her parents. “It was a blessing to do that,” she said.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Mirna called her mother and father every day. She avoided any physical contact with her elderly parents, for fear that they might get sick.

“I went to see them outside the house in the window,” she said.

COVID hits home

In February 2021, Eduardo Rodriguez became ill with COVID-19, and he later learned that one of the employees at the construction job he was working on had tested positive for the virus. As a precaution to keep him apart from Lilian’s parents, Eduardo spent a week and one-half in a hotel. But the virus spread through the rest of the members of their household, and Lilian, Carlos and Maria all became infected with COVID-19. Maria had chills and was feeling worse, and was hospitalized, then Carlos was hospitalized one day later, and Lilian one day after that. All three family members were in the same Annapolis hospital, being treated for COVID-19.

“It was awful… It was like I was having a bad dream. I was hoping and praying God would make a miracle,” Lilian remembered.

As a family member and fellow patient there, Lilian was able to visit her parents in person, and the hospital set up Zoom meetings with their other family members, so they could see Carlos and Maria. “You could see they were in pain, gasping for air so bad,” Lilian said.

“Thank goodness I was able to go to their rooms,” Lilian said, remembering that after awhile, “my dad couldn’t talk anymore.”

Remembering those days, Mirna began crying. “I couldn’t hold their hand or anything. Because of COVID, we couldn’t go in (and be with them). They gave us Zoom (meetings). It was very hard… It was like a nightmare. Everything went so fast.”

Within a week and one-half after becoming ill, both Carlos and then Maria Rustrian died of COVID-19. Their funeral Mass was held at Our Lady of Sorrows in Takoma Park, Maryland, and they were buried together at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Mirna remembered how a couple of weeks earlier, she had wanted to stop by their house to bring her parents chocolate for Valentine’s Day, but her mother told her to wait, because Eduardo had gotten sick. “She was worried about me,” Mirna said.

As her parents had gotten older, Mirna in recent years had picked them up for Mass on Sunday and taken them to her church, Sacred Heart in Bowie, and they would have a family dinner together at her house later that day. When the pandemic hit, Maria told her that she liked watching the televised Masses, but missed receiving Communion.

A final blessing

Both sisters said a special blessing of their parents’ last days was that their pastor at Our Lady of Sorrows, Father Shaun Foggo, went to the hospital and anointed them, heard their Confessions and gave them Communion. He also anointed Lilian, who survived and was able to come home.

“Father Shaun said my mother prayed with him, knew all the prayers, confessed and received Communion,” Mirna said.

The day before Maria died, Lilian was in the hospital room with her, and called Mirna and connected with her via FaceTime so she could see their mother one last time. 

“She gave us a blessing with her hand, to my husband and me,” Mirna remembered.

A few days earlier, Maria was alert, and had spoken to Mirna on the phone from her hospital room, telling her she loved her and to take care of herself and her family.

Lilian said the last day she saw her mother, she left messages for the whole family, encouraging her daughters to stay close to one another, and she also left messages for the grandchildren, “advising them to keep going, to be happy, to do something in life” and to focus on God.

Before they became infected with the coronavirus and died from it in March, Carlos and Maria Rustrian were on a list to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. After her recovery, Lilian was able to be vaccinated in May.

Asked about people who still haven’t taken the opportunity to be vaccinated, Lilian said, “My advice would be to do it… People have been dying… If we don’t do anything to protect ourselves, this thing is never going to end. We have to do something to stop it. Think about other people, not just yourself. When you’re vaccinated, you’re protecting not only yourself, but the rest of your family.”

Loss and memories

For both sisters, the loss of their parents, and cherished memories of the love and faith they shared, lingers. 

Asked what she misses most, Lilian said, “Their presence, just to be there when I get home.”

She added, “For me, they were the best parents. I think God was blessing us with them. They were so kind, and always looking after us, that we were happy and okay.”

Carlos and Maria Rustrian met in church, and their faith was woven into their life together for more than six decades.

“My dad and my mom from the beginning, faith has been the primary thing in my family,” Lilian said. “To the last days of their lives, they had God at the center of their lives.” 

Faith, she said, has been the “strong foundation in our lives.”

Lilian also emphasized “their marriage was a really good example for everybody.” In all her years living with them, she never heard them argue. As her father’s health failed in recent years, “my mom was serving my dad to the end,” Lilian said, noting how she remembered hearing her father say many times to his wife, “Thank you for everything you are doing for me.”

“They really showed being married means you have to be serving each other,” she said.

She remembered how when her parents celebrated their 60^th anniversary, “It was the first time I saw them kiss in front of other people. He said (to my mother), ‘You are so beautiful. I love your eyes.’ I could see he really meant each word.”

Mirna remembered the care and love that her parents showed to others. “They taught me generosity, love and respect,” she said, also remembering how when she was battling cancer, “My mother said, ‘Give it to God, accept it, keep going.’”

She added, “The faith I have is because of my mother and my father… They showed me the best, Christian way to treat people” and how to respect everyone and be kind to them.

Eight months after Carlos and Maria Rustrian’s deaths from COVID-19, their family members remember his bear hugs and her singing as she cooked.

“I miss my father and my mother a lot, every day,” Mirna said.