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Friday, March 29, 2024

‘In sickness and in health’ — over seven decades

Rebecca and Jesse Montez are approaching their 70th wedding anniversary, but are drastically scaling back their plans to mark the Sept. 2 day due to concerns about COVID-19. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Pandemic effects are latest hurdle for St. Paul couple

Rebecca Arellano Montez, 86, can’t celebrate her 70th wedding anniversary Sept. 2 with her husband, Jesse, the way she would like. Their efforts to avoid contracting COVID-19 make it impossible for them to receive a special blessing at a Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe in St. Paul, or to host a meal in a big hall with lots of family and friends, music and dancing.

“We plan nothing, absolutely nothing,” Montez said. “We’re just lucky to be here.”

But they want their friends to know about their milestone anniversary, and to know that without the pandemic, many people would be part of their special day. They also bring 70 years of perspective to their lost opportunity to celebrate, and to the challenges everyone is facing in these trying times.

Married in 1950 at age 16 (“They always say, ‘Oh, those young marriages never last.’ I don’t go by that. But our religion was very strong.”), Montez contracted tuberculosis at age 21 and was hospitalized for a year in St. Paul. Her husband was able to visit, but not the first two of their five children, ages 4 and 5 at the time.

A photo of Jesse and Rebecca Montez from their wedding in 1950. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

“A couple of times we would go to the window, and I would see them through the window,” she said. “At that time, there were a lot of people dying of tuberculosis. One family I knew lost three children.”

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Now, there is medication to treat tuberculosis. But in 1955, Montez was not getting better. She was tested every six weeks and consumed bottles and bottles of milk as part of her treatment, but remained exhausted and confined to bed. Doctors finally recommended and then removed part of her lungs. That turned the corner for her, she said.

“I’m a person who has a lot of energy,” said Montez, who — with 89-year-old Jesse — recently worked on areas of their home’s foundation to keep moisture out. “I fully recovered. I got it all back.”

Her hospital stay wasn’t the only time Montez was pulled away from family. Her husband’s job with a large meatpacking company brought them to Washington state from 1979 to 1983, a move that placed them hundreds of miles from Montez’s five sisters, other family and friends.

During their stint in Washington, Montez’s mother, Carlotta, and her husband’s mother, Regoria, died in the same week. Montez and her husband returned for their funerals in 1982, but bore most of their mourning alone.

“My mother died on a Monday. My mother-in-law died on that Friday. Being alone over there, without support, I cried and cried. I wanted to be here, and I couldn’t,” Montez recalled.

For Montez, that mourning manifested physically through an outbreak of shingles, a painful rash caused by the same virus as the chicken pox.

“If I’d had my sisters with me, I don’t think I would have been so bad. And I’m trying to help my husband mourn, and I’m mourning,” she said. “That’s when I got the shingles. I got the shingles so bad.”

None of those experiences takes away from the seriousness of COVID-19, she said. They lost an elderly nephew who was living in Shoreview to COVID-19 a couple of months ago. The state of her own lungs has Montez particularly worried about the pandemic.

“I wouldn’t make it,” Montez said. “COVID attacks the lungs. I wouldn’t make it.”

Her family and friends don’t enter their home right now. If one of their children, nine grandchildren or 11 great-grandchildren swing by with some food or other goods to share, they leave it on a picnic table in the backyard, protected from the weather by a large patio umbrella. She leaves the house once a week to shop for groceries.

Montez talks on the phone every day with each of her five sisters, but they used to get together all the time. Her activities with friends at the parish have temporarily ended, including assisting with the annual enchilada Lenten dinners and cleaning linens and candlesticks as necessary to prepare the altar for Masses.

“This is a bad thing,” Montez said of COVID-19. “There is no getting around it. That was a bad time (her tuberculosis). We just got over it. And we’re working at getting over this. And we will. It’s just going to take time.”

Through 70 years of marriage and 86 years of a very full life, Montez said she has learned an important lesson.

“You take one crisis at time,” she said. “If you have a crisis and you get over it, you have another crisis. And you take them as they come.”


Keeping a marriage strong

Being pulled away from family and friends during their marriage was not easy, Rebecca Montez said of the time from 1979 to 1983 that she and her husband left St. Paul to live in Washington state. They had to say goodbye to their parish, Our Lady of Guadalupe in St. Paul, where they were very active, and which her husband’s parents and grandparents helped found in 1931.

But they had each other, Montez said.

“Our religion was very strong,” she said. “My husband and I are very close. Very close. I’ve known him my whole life. He lived across the street from me (growing up). I was at 225 State St., he was at 214 State St. His grandparents lived behind me.”

When they moved to Washington, they bought mopeds and drove into the mountains and along the ocean. “We’d sit and drink pop, the scenery was beautiful,” she said.

They had a mobile home and traveled the state and other parts of the country.

Back in St. Paul, they were among 25 couples who danced as a folk troupe and performed in city parks and civic centers. She sang the national anthem at events, in Spanish.

“We had a very good social life,” Montez said. “Now, people just go to bars and drink. There’s no socializing. Or they stay up all night watching TV.”

“When you do things together, it’s quality,” she said.

 


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