Honoring our Dad’s Final Wishes

Hi, my name is Kiara, daughter of Gilbert Gerardo. With great grief, on August 8th, my dad passed away from a devastating brain bleed that left him in a coma for 9 days in the Neuro Intensive Care Unit (ICU). During this hard time, my brother Lucky and I have been by his side along with the rest of our family, hoping and praying for a miracle. Being my dad’s decision maker in all his care, it hasn’t been easy coordinating between his amazing healthcare team and our family while predicting what the future without our dad might look like. After his fight, our dad succumbed to his brain injuries and we had to say our goodbyes. He was the best dad, son, partner, brother, uncle, papa, and friend. He was so funny, never took himself seriously, always making jokes and lighting up the room with his smile and laugh. He loved to go fishing, you would always find him at the beach with his friends whenever he wasn’t hard at work to provide for me and my brother. He’s the hardest working person I know. Even when he was extremely tired and dealing with his recent health diagnoses in the last few years, he never made any excuses because his #1 priority was to take care of me and my brother and see us both succeed. He wouldn’t ask for anything in return, but Lucky and I always promised him we’d return all that he has provided for us back to him in the future. While we can no longer do that, our last wish for him is to provide him his wish of being buried. He was and is still so deeply loved by everyone that was fortunate to know and be loved by him.

In a final goodbye to show our dad how much he was loved, my brother and I are hoping to honor his wishes of having a traditional burial. Having not experienced a loss before and without life insurance, the funeral planning has proven to be incredibly challenging both emotionally and financially as my brother and I are doing our best to try to fund our dad’s funeral ourselves in a very short time span within the next few weeks. The starting goal we set would be a small portion of the total costs of his funeral, including but not limited to his celebration of life, transportation, casket, plot of land, memorial etc. This was incredibly hard to decide to share and we don’t expect a lot, but would greatly appreciate any help during this time, even prayers for our entire family; no donation or gesture is too small and we are so very thankful for the ongoing support. 

Thank you so much to everyone for getting this far. Hug and kiss a loved one in your life. From a loving daughter and son, this is for our dad. 

[If you prefer to donate more directly via Venmo, my handle is @kiaramg]