Emilia Moreno Santillan

Her Dad was a barber, restaurant owner and handyman. Her mom was a homemaker raising 9 surviving children. In those days that meant cooking 3 meals a day, washing lots of clothes, keeping an immaculate house and making sure dinner was on the table and the kids clean and dressed for dinner when Dad got home.

Emily was a mom all her life. As the oldest daughter, little Emily was her mother's right hand. She was raising her siblings when she was just a child herself. As a result of the tiresome schedule and a bit of dyslexia, she stopped attending school very early on, but she grew in wisdom through life experiences.

Though she had many difficult experiences in her growing years, her motto was always to take the good and leave the bad. She learned from every experience, even if it was what not to do.

Her heart was always centered around family. She was fiercely protective of her family right up to her last days; whether her husband, her siblings, her children, or her grandchildren.

She was a fighter. Growing up in Southside Chicago meant that kids sorted out their problems with their knuckles. Back then, no one was concerned about bullying. Little Emily fought to defend her siblings. Throughout her life she fought through trials and adversity, she fought aging, and in the end she fought cancer.

As she grew older, she defended her family through prayer. Never a good sleeper, she spent the long hours of the night praying for every family member by name. It was always amazing how such an industrious woman could run on so few hours of sleep, but that is how she lived.

Emily was a constant gardener and loved to plant things and see them grow. Her housekeeping standards never dwindled, but she was happiest surrounded by the things she was growing, whether flowers or children. Gardening and child-rearing fed her love of productivity, protectiveness, her need to feed things and people, and to see the fruit of her labor.

As the matriarch of our extended family, she set a strong foundation for us all. We will miss her hugs, her cooking, her Chicago accent telling us: "I love youse." Though we miss her terribly we know she was met by the loving gaze and embrace of Jesus and finally understands her full worth.