Natalia da Conçeicão Riscado Gomes

Natalia was born on Christmas Eve, 1934 (though due to an error, her official day of birth was recorded as Jan. 24,1935) to Joaõ Luis Riscado and Isabel da Silva. Natalia was born at home in the small village of Ribeirinha, Pico, Açores. She was the 4th child of 5 surviving siblings. She would live in Ribeirinha with her parents and brother, Manuel, until her mid 20’s at which point she married and moved to Terceira to be with her husband Antonio. They were married for 61 1/2 years. There, she would help her beloved sister-in-law, Maria Gomes Coelho, bake fresh bread every day for their little market shop. Natalia, Antonio, and their 2 young daughters would emigrate to the US in Dec. 1967 and eventually settle in New Bedford where Natalia, Antonio, and Fatima would spend the rest of their lives. She died in her home, as was her wish, after her being taken care of for a year in her home, by her daughter Isabel.

Natalia had a very happy childhood, surrounded by siblings she adored and good friends. She loved nature and animals and a tight community where everyone knew everyone, so Pico was the perfect place for her. She loved their goats in particular and took great pride in that. She once saved a baby goat that had been missing. She found it in a ravine and nursed it back to health. She loved going to “festas” (feasts) with her dad, who also loved to go, and dance the “chamarita”. A traditional Azorean music genre and dance. She would love all the traditional music throughout her entire life. Luckily, living in New Bedford gave her plenty of opportunities to enjoy everything that she loved from home.

The transition to the US was very difficult for many reasons, including that her daughter Fatima was physically and intellectually disabled. She spent 62 years caring for Fatima until Fatima’s death at 62. She knew no one in New Bedford when she arrived, but as George Eliot wrote in Middlemarch: “So in heaven’s spot and hour, Springs a little native flower, Downward root and upward eye, Shaped by the earth and sky.” Natalia planted her roots in New Bedford always with an eye to the same moon, stars and sun that she had lived under on her beloved Pico. She worked hard to help her family bloom in this new soil, and she was the sun that nourished them.

Natalia was an ordinary person with extraordinary grace and talent. She opened her arms to everyone and extended the grace that she felt God offered her as well. She wanted to be (and was) a channel for Jesus’ beatitudes. She was an extremely talented seamstress, crocheter and knitter. She had an incredible ability to visual shapes, measurements and how pieces fit together. Someone could walk by in an outfit that she liked, and she would go home and sketch it out, make a pattern according to appropriate measurements and they make it exquisitely. Because of this talent she was asked to make sample clothing for designers in NYC as well as runway pieces. She was a seamstress her entire working life in New Bedford working for two factories. Her immense talent skipped her daughters but landed squarely with her granddaughter, Eva. This brought her much joy and pride. She equally adored her grandson Ian and helped raise them both. She would spend hours on the floor, despite having bad knees, to help her Ian build complicated train tracks. The two of them share the amazing ability to visualize how things fit together.

Natalia loved cooking, feeding people, animals and gardening. Early on, she and Antonio came to an accord on garden duties on their enchanted little property. He would handle fruits and vegetables, and she would handle flowers. The exception being that she would be the overseer of the fig trees, that being her favorite fruit and a connection to her childhood home. She kept count of every single bud and fig, and expansive investigations would ensue if one went missing. The one aspect of the property that was never settled over 45 years was the shrubbery. Natalia felt that Antonio cut them back too much and Antonio felt she didn’t cut them back enough. They are probably still “discussing” this now. In heaven, as their beloved daughter, Fatima, rolls her eyes at them as she did in life. Again, as George Eliot wrote, “Souls live on in perpetual echoes …” Theirs will be this… the unfinished business of shrubbery pruning.

Natalia loved deeply and it wasn’t according to blood ties. Though she had no family when she arrived in the US, she cobbled one together. Of particular note is Maria DeAraujo (of Acushnet, MA) who was her daughters’ childhood friend. She loved Maria like a daughter and Maria helped care for Fatima and well as Natalia. Maria gave Natalia her last haircut (Natalia trusted no one else) and one of the last requests Natalia made was for her daughter to pay Maria for the haircut. Natalia hated debt and didn’t want to die in “debt”. (Though Maria did it out of love like everything else she did for the Gomes family). Her daughter, Isabel, promised to give Maria “$30 bucks”.

Natalia was prepared spiritually for death. She had no fear of it. Years ago, she designed and made her burial “outfit” so that she would “look good meeting God and Jesus”. A few days before she died, she told her daughter about it and had her get the outfit from her closet. Upon seeing it, Natalia, found it a bit duller than she remembered and asked her daughter to get a scarf or a pin with some color. But not too much color or too bright, because “after all it wasn’t going to be a “festa” (party).”

She adored her son-in-law, Damien, who came to live in Massachusetts, Michigan. He was the son she never had. Damien would become her supplier of flowers and fish. Though she was never able to pronounce his name and called him her “Damey” for nearly 35 years, nor did she understand why he would throw trout back once he caught them.

Additionally, Natalia was very involved in the childhood lives of Edward (Washington, DC) and Tony Viveiros (New Bedford, MA) and loved them like grandchildren. And they returned the love to this day. They brought her so much joy in her life.

She made many wonderful friends and had the privilege of spending much time with several of her husband’s distant cousins in New Bedford whom she grew to love deeply and were a source of support and love for many decades.

She was predeceased by her beloved husband and daughter, Antonio and Fatima. As well as her deeply loved parents and siblings, Manuel, Joaõ, Maria (all of Pico) and Faustino (Faial, Azores) and sister who died very early in life, also named Maria.

She is survived by her daughter and son in law, Isabel Gomes McCann and Damien McCann and her beloved and prized grandchildren Ian and Eva McCann all of Rochester, MA, her god daughter and niece whom she adored, Goretti Silva Lino Tavares (Faial, Azores). She leaves many nieces and nephews in the Azores and Canada.

Her family will be forever grateful to Dr. Robert Caldas and his secretary Fatima, who cared for her for decades and her Cardiologist Dr Matthew Costa. They made it possible for her to have a good quality of life. Additionally, her aides of the last year, Aureliana, Viviane, and Maddy, who treated her like their own mom with much love and dignity. To them, obrigada. As well as her amazing hospice team at Southcoast VNA in particular her nurses, Leanne, Al and Sean. Because of all of them, Natalia was able to be at home until the end. Just like she wished.

Her visitation is on Saturday, January 17, 2026, from 9:00AM to 11:00AM at ROCK FUNERAL HOME, 1285 Ashley Blvd. New Bedford, Ma. Followed by a service at 11:00AM at the funeral home. Relatives and family are invited. Burial will take place at Pine Grove. For online tributes: www.rock-funeralhome.com