Some 700 mourners gathered Saturday with a New Jersey mom to pay their final farewell to her husband and four daughters killed in a horrific car crash last month.
Mary Rose Ballocanag, 53, sat weeping in a wheelchair in the front row of the service, her nurse on one side and her mother-in-law on the other, as five dark-wood caskets holding her lost family and their portraits were slowly carried in one at a time on pallbearers’ shoulders.
The caskets were placed in front of a small stage with a gold cross and candles inside the gym at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Hackensack, N.J., where the funeral was held to accommodate the grieving throng.
The choir from the family’s parish, the Church of St. Anastasia, sang hymns from one side of the stage, which was surrounded by blossoming pink, white and yellow wreaths shaped like hearts and a peace sign. The eulogies assured Ballocanag she wasn’t alone despite the unbearable tragedy.
“Mary Rose, we can never really know what you’re going through,” Bergenfield Councilman Arvin Amatorio eulogized. “These are the moments that remind us life is fleeting. … Know that your extended family, brought together by this unspeakable loss, will be here for you long after you bury your loved ones.”
Ballocanag was the sole survivor of the July 6 crash in Delaware that killed her husband, Audie Marquez Trinidad, 61, and their daughters — Kaitlyn, 20, Danna, 17, and 14-year-old twins Melissa and Allison.
Speakers recalled Trinidad as a faithful, loving and devoted husband and father. Kaitlyn was positive and had a radiant smile, and Danna was “determined, bright and charismatic,” Ballocanag’s aunt Lydia Agas said. The twins were “fiercely protective of each other” and always together, she said.
“Let us make sure that this present scene is not how we remember Audie, Kaitlyn, Danna, Allison and Melissa,” Agas said. “These five souls are so much more than a news story of tragedy that brings us together today.”
Their pastor, the Rev. Herman Kinzler, said the family was always volunteering at the church and the girls would play angels in the annual Christmas show.
Ballocanag worked nights as a nurse at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan so she could spend more time with her family, said Basil Hamilton, a longtime friend and Allison’s godfather.
“The Trinadad family was a loving, kind, generous family, always willing to help, always willing to feed you, make sure you were happy,” Hamilton said in his eulogy.
Teaneck Mayor Mohammed Hameeduddin said a memorial in town will be created to honor them.
At the end of the two-hour funeral, mourners joined the choir in a moving rendition of “Amazing Grace.” Two men in their military whites, there to memorialize former Navy officer Trinidad, carried an American flag down the aisle to the casket and carefully folded it as the “Taps” bugle call was played over the gym loudspeakers.
Ballocanag was given the flag and hundreds of family and friends continued their choral lament as the funeral procession began to the lyrics of “Amazing Grace.”
The grieving mom, who still had hospital bracelets on, clutched the folded red, white and blue banner as her nurse wheeled her out of the gym following the caskets.
The family was driving along a highway on their way home from a Fourth of July holiday trip to Ocean City, Md. when a southbound work truck, driven by Alvin S. Hubbard Jr., crossed the grassy median and slammed into them near the northern Delaware town of Townsend.
The family decided to wait to take the Maryland trip until Kaitlyn, a nursing student, finished her semester at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in The Bronx. Danna, the second oldest, was going into her last year of high school. The twins, who turned 14 on June 17, had just finished eighth grade.
Ballocanag has said she’s suing Hubbard, who has not been charged as the investigation continues.
She suffered multiple fractures to her arms and legs and has had several surgeries since. She’s still recovering at the Kessler Rehabilitation Center in Saddle Brook, where last month she said she’s “dying inside over and over again.”
She arrived at her family’s wake on Friday in a stretcher. Eight EMTs waited on the side of the funeral with another stretcher and an ambulance was parked outside, though Ballocanag didn’t seem to need either as she left the funeral through a side door Saturday.
Agas remembered hugging and kissing her niece in the hospital right after the crash.
“You responded with a cry and you said, ‘I am now alone, aunty,’” Agas told Ballocanag during her eulogy. “I responded, ‘No sweetheart. You are not alone. I am here. We are all here.’”
