For most of my life, I’ve had difficult relationship with Easter. Easter reminds me of sad times and represents an end of the childhood I knew up until then.

My large, Mexican family got together for every holiday. Because we lived on a ranch, my parents would frequently host the gatherings. Birthdays, Christmas, and Easter were celebrated with relatives from both sides of the family. They were special times reconnect with cousins and their families. The women cooked, my dad barbecued, and my mom would make dessert and one or more pinatas. I’m fortunate to have home movies that document some of those gatherings.

When I was young, I loved Easter. We all dressed up in our best outfits and went to church. We’d all gather back at the ranch for Easter baskets, egg hunts, and lots of good food. When the weather was good, we’d have Easter egg hunts outside in the ranch’s fenced-in yard.

Before the hunt, the kids were moved into the little guest house on the property, with the curtains closed so we couldn’t see where the adults hid the eggs. Once the eggs were hidden, they opened the door and we charged out to find as many as we could.  The yard was huge, so there were lots of places to search. It was so much fun!

That all changed when my father got sick. It seemed like overnight he went from this strong, hard-working dad to a diminished one. As an adult, I found out that the transition was indeed very quick. In my father’s daily work logs, he mentions that he wasn’t feeling well and went to a doctor on April 4th. By April 11th, he was in surgery to remove a tumor.

In the beginning, we kids really didn’t know what was going on other than Daddy wasn’t well and he wasn’t home. That Easter Sunday (April 17), Mom drove us to O’Connor Hospital in San Jose so she could visit my father. Because children were not allowed to visit, we had to stay in the car. It seemed like hours that we played with our Easter baskets in the back of the station wagon in the parking garage. When we got home, there was no big family gathering, no Easter egg hunt, no big family meal. That’s when I realized things were not going to be the same. My vision of our world changed that day.

We continued to have some sort of Easter celebration after my father passed away the following year, but not on the same scale as before. When I went off to college, I stopped celebrating Easter unless I happened to be at my Mom’s. I started celebrating Easter again when our daughter was born. While we didn’t have big family gatherings, we gave her Easter baskets, colored eggs with her, and hid them for an egg hunt. When she moved out, our Easter celebrations dwindled.  

It’s been 65 years since that Easter in the station wagon. I still find Easter a difficult holiday to celebrate.

4/20/2025