12 Days: Family of six struggles after death of husband, father

Day 5 of 12 

ELSA – Light rain pattered on a framed portrait of Jose Angel Saldaña early Thursday outside the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Elsa.

Gloria Saldaña, 33, longingly gazed at the picture before reluctantly ushering what she calls her pillars – five daughters – into a car.

For the second time this year, the grieving Edcouch family held a memorial there for their father and husband, who shot himself in front of his wife and died in his daughter’s arms one year ago today.

“The girls are going to miss him and do miss him,” Saldaña said. “But they’re going to grow up and get married hopefully, and I’m going to be the one missing somebody.

“It’s like I’m alone all over again.”

Times grew rough near the end of her husband’s life, as Hurricane Alex and the torrential downpours that followed prevented him from getting much work as a pipelayer.

But once he committed suicide, Saldaña said she lost the one teammate she had to get through it all.

“Jose was this Mexican macho,” she said, wiping away tears. “But the last few years he would hold my hand, and I would feel kind of like he was showing me more that everything was going to be all right.

“I’ve told my daughters, ‘When your daddy died, my heart died.’”

“IT’S TOO HARD TO TALK”

On Dec. 11, 2010 – one day after Saldaña’s 32nd birthday – beer and a .22-caliber rifle turned a miscommunication between husband and wife terribly wrong.

Pregnant with their fifth daughter, Jolie Angeline, Saldaña recalled fighting over gas money and her family. But all that fled her mind when he placed the gun in his mouth.

“People thought I killed him,” she said. “But why would I do that? What mother would want to take her (future) newborn baby’s dad away from her?”

Saldaña directed her eldest daughter, Oneida, now 14, to cradle her bleeding husband as she waited for emergency responders to arrive. But too much blood escaped him and pooled around the couple’s bed before medical crews could detach him from Oneida’s arms.

One year later, Oneida could not speak of that night, which worried her 10-year-old sister Vivian.

“I’m afraid to talk to a counselor, but I think Oneida should,” she said. “On the day he died, she was holding him.”

Tears welled in Vivian’s large brown eyes, leaving a single wet streak down her left cheek.

“We’re doing good, (but) I really don’t know what Oneida thinks,” she said. “It’s too hard to talk about anymore.”

“MY SISTERS DESERVE A LOT”

Following Jose Saldaña’s death, the family’s finances immediately worsened, as Saldaña struggled to pay for a funeral, steer her girls through the pain and welcome a fifth daughter into the world in July.

Collecting little more than $1,000 a month in Social Security benefits, Saldaña has fallen behind in property payment for her 5-acre land tract and cannot afford to patch up the drafty trailer sitting there.

The mother admits last Christmas would have been a disaster, but the Edcouch-Elsa school district donated a tree and gifts.

But daughter Yesenia, 12, expects a good holiday this year.

“I make a lot of crafts for presents,” she explains, holding an elaborate, miniature sled filled with hand-made gifts.

“We’ll go to the dollar store to get stuff for each other, but I wanted things to be more special,” Yesenia said. “My sisters deserve a lot. Mom, too.”

Always in need of more craft supplies, Yesenia also will make nearly 30 decorated stockings for her extended family.

And she plans to decorate them like the five stockings hanging on the crumbling wall in the Saldaña’s small hallway.

“My mom doesn’t like us to celebrate her birthday because of what happened,” Yesenia said. “We can still have a good Christmas, though.”

“RICH WITH LOVE”

Walking outside the trailer as the sun set Friday, Saldaña did not request gifts for herself and simply hoped her daughter’s wish is fulfilled.

For now, she worries about how to afford a car large enough to carry her family around town and how long to keep her oven open to warm the trailer – the family’s gas heater broke recently.

Finances have kept the girls from ever enjoying video game systems, home computers, TVs and even the paintball and exploder guns each has wanted for some time.

But all agree they truly dream of having a jungle gym set sturdy enough to hold Oneida.

“She never got to play on one when she was little,” Yesenia said. “We all like to play together once the chores are done.”

As she and her sisters scrambled around the yard Friday, often imagining games to entertain feisty 2-year-old Bianca, Saldaña said her girls would be OK.

“I tell them, ‘You all are rich with love, with food, with everything,” she said, watching Bianca run to push Yesenia off a large PVC pipe on which she balanced.

“After Jose left, our fence broke once, and I tried to fix it. All the girls came to help, and that was Jose who taught them how to run a ranch,” Saldaña said. “He taught us if we work together, we will do fine.”

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Neal Morton covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at nmorton@themonitor.com or (956) 683-4472.