The Key Bridge collapse: Six months later, six families are still grieving

Mariela had been fasting for about 36 hours, her way of asking God for a miracle.

She was wracked with uncertainty about whether the man she'd spent half of her life with, the father of her four kids, the romantic who wrote her gushy love poems, was alive.

As she waited in a police station for that miracle, they came to her with news so crushing she felt it in her chest. They found her husband's red pickup truck. His body was inside, one of the first to be recovered.

Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, was the foreman of the small overnight construction crew repairing potholes on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when a container ship struck a support pier and sent the span, and the men on it, tumbling nearly 200 feet into the water below.

Alejandro and most of his crew would be trapped by a tangle of road, mud and twisted steel in the frigid Patapsco River. Six workers died, including Alejandro and Mariela's nephew Carlos Daniel Hernandez. A seventh, Julio Cervantes Suarez, was pulled from the water and survived. He is Mariela's brother-in-law.

The wait for word after the March 26 tragedy was agonizing. "So I said, OK, in one sense, the torture is over, but now comes the pain of accepting what happened," Mariela told The Baltimore Banner.

Mariela and all of the families of the men who lost their lives are figuring out how to keep their households running, how to sort through the confusing bureaucracy of the bridge investigations and legal sagas — and most of all how to grieve, in many cases with relatives who are thousands of miles and multiple borders away.

It has been six months. The pain hasn't let up.

"I'm suffering, and not a night goes by when I don't cry," Mariela said.

'I hope we remember him as a hero'

It took days, even weeks, before relatives of the other men knew for sure . Thousands of tons of steel were lodged under about 50 feet of murky water. Recovery took time. Families waited.

On May 1, state officials came to the Glen Burnie home of María del Carmen Castellón Luna, who goes by Carmen. She knew what they were there to tell her.

Carmen and Miguel Angel Luna Gonzales had grown up in towns near each other in civil war-torn El Salvador and survived dangerous treks to the U.S.

They met in Maryland — she sold him lunch at a construction site somewhere — fell in love, got married and melded their families, and bought a house. He helped her open her own food truck, and the two were scouting for a brick-and-mortar restaurant space.

Luna Gonzales, 49, had stopped by the food truck on his way to work late in the day on March 25. She made him a tortilla and two bean tamales. He kissed her. She felt proud as he drove off.

Life since the bridge collapsed has been a blur. Carmen, 46, has barely slept. Family and friends have filled the house, including two brothers she hadn't seen in 20 years who traveled from El Salvador on humanitarian parole.

Some of the families repatriated their loved ones' remains. Carmen wanted to keep her husband close. Baltimore City covered the cost of the burial, she said, and now she visits his gravesite whenever she can.

She keeps the grave immaculate, adorned by a colorful mix of real and fake flowers, and plastic butterflies that she said represent transformation. Carmen goes there to think, to pray, to talk to her partner of 15 years. They were building their American dream together.

"I want people to know that my husband was a good person, a good husband, a good father, a good grandfather, a man that came to this country to contribute the best of himself to it," Carmen said. "I hope we remember him as a hero because he was working that night so that that road wouldn't keep getting damaged, so that families could make it over safely."

The cemetery provides stillness in an otherwise chaotic schedule.

She's trying to keep her food truck afloat. And she's helping a big, blended family grieve.

"Now I'm running all over the place. I have to work harder," she said. "But, as long as God grants me life and good health, I can do it. I know I can do it."

'The dream I carry in my soul suddenly isn't there'

Mariela and Alejandro were teenagers when they met in the mid-2000s in Lanham in Prince George's County, after emigrating from different parts of Mexico.

They studied the Bible together. Alejandro would ask Mariela to burn him CDs on her computer of his favorite religious songs. One that he loved, "Al Taller Del Maestro," sticks with her.

Cómo expresarte sin palabras, que me muero si no estás // How to tell you without words, that I'd die without you here

Que el sueño que llevo en el alma, de repente ya no está // That the dream I carry in my soul suddenly isn't there

More than a decade and four children later, the couple had settled into a comfortable routine in their 30s. They purchased a home near Baltimore. Alejandro had a stable job that he talked about incessantly — so much so that sometimes she tuned him out.

He was a man of devout faith and a hard worker, she said. He pushed their daughters in school, especially their oldest, a teenager who dreams of being a surgeon. He'd ask her why the B's on her report card weren't A's.

But he could also be the life of the party, making their kids laugh with ease.

"He always provided so they'd never lack anything," she said. "It's why he worked a lot of overtime, so he could give them whatever they needed."

And how sweet he was. Mariela has a stack of poems and love notes to show for it.

"Quiero ser tu poeta, tu amado, tus sueños, tu corazon // I wish to be your poet, your lover, your dreams, your heart

mi vida entera es tuya a tus pies en todo momento // My entire life is yours and at your feet in every moment"

'The world was going to descend on them'

The bridge tragedy abruptly reshuffled so many plans and dreams. Mariela, 32, now must provide for the needs of her children.

After the collapse, local officials and advocates mobilized. The Latino Racial Justice Circle, a nonprofit in Baltimore, raised nearly $100,000 in about six hours to aid the families of the victims.

Immigrant affairs coordinators for Baltimore and Baltimore County arranged support services, partnering with the Baltimore Civic Fund. People donated more than $1 million before the effort closed at the end of August, according to the officials overseeing it. Payments go to each family monthly based on their household's needs.

That money has been a lifeline, Mariela said. Thinking about all the people who donated fills her with gratitude.

"They didn't just help me pay a bill," she said. "They made it so that I could have time to be with my kids and take care of them."

Catalina Rodriguez Lima, director of Mayor Brandon Scott's Office of Immigrant Affairs, and Giuliana Valencia-Banks, immigrant affairs outreach coordinator in Baltimore County Executive John Olszewski's office, knew the families' needs would be complex and long term.

They also knew the families would face a labyrinth of city, state and federal government procedures — and that there would be a confusing crush of reporters, attorneys and even scammers.

"Giuliana and I [were] just brainstorming and trying to think about ways to support them, knowing that the world was going to descend on them," Rodriguez Lima said.

It has often been overwhelming, Mariela acknowledged.

In the days after the collapse, a TV station pulled a family photo from Alejandro's Facebook profile and aired it, without asking permission or notifying the family, she said. It didn't blur her oldest daughter's face, she said. And her daughter was the first to see it on the news.

"She came to me crying, saying, 'Mom, how can I go back to school now?'" Mariela said.

Time has been a scarce resource. There are new tasks every day — attorneys to meet, school pickups to coordinate, therapy. The air-conditioning broke this summer, and she had to scramble to find someone to fix it.

The Civic Fund covered that expense. And groceries. And her phone bill. And her mortgage. It's intended to take care of some of life's logistics while the families grieve.

The fund is large enough to last through the end of next year, case managers recently told the families, giving them a runway to find their new normal. Mariela said she craves a sense of routine and wonders when it will come.

'Mother, we need to talk'

They didn't know how they were going to tell their mother.

José Martins and other siblings in Honduras had just learned that Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, the family's youngest, had been working on the Key Bridge when it collapsed.

They decided to have two doctors ready to attend to their mother, Rosa Emerita Sandoval Paz, at her home in Santa Bárbara, José said. Some media were stationed outside.

"Mother, we need to talk. Maynor had an accident," José recalled saying when they arrived at the house.

She fell to the floor, José said, and had to be sedated.

"I don't think she was fully aware of what was happening," José said. "It was a tough moment, filled with tears, pain and sadness."

Five siblings and Rosa were granted permission to travel to the U.S. to view the 38-year-old's body and mourn. They arrived in Baltimore about 15 days after the collapse.

Relatives have had to mourn and travel great distances in these past six months.

Mariela's mother, who lives in Mexico, has been with her since April to help with the kids — another lifeline.

She came to the U.S. on humanitarian parole, a permission for people without visas to enter the country for a limited period for "urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons."

Mariela wasn't sure if her mother's request would get approved. Her mother surprised her when she arrived on the April day the family held a memorial service for Alejandro.

President Joe Biden met with relatives of each victim when he visited Baltimore and the collapsed bridge site April 5 . Mariela shared her worry that her mother wouldn't make the service.

"He told me, 'We're going to do everything we can,'" Mariela recalled.

Their extended family tries to get together every Sunday as they have for years, she said.

"Being with family really helped me not fall deeper into a depression," she said.

Still, the gatherings are darker, less vibrant.

Alejandro was a loud and joyful presence. Sundays were also a chance to spend time with her 24-year-old nephew, Carlos Daniel Hernandez, "Dani," who was particularly close to Alejandro.

'It tortures me not knowing'

Alejandro and Mariela drove over the Key Bridge the weekend before it collapsed.

The towering steel structure scared Mariela. But Alejandro took pride in his work to keep the road deck in good condition.

"He told me, 'Look, this part of the bridge we already finished. This upcoming week we are going to work on this other part here,'" as they drove the 1.7 miles over the Patapsco, she said.

The weeks prior, the couple had been having unusually serious conversations, an eerie fact that has lingered with Mariela over these past six months. He told her he wanted to be cremated when he died.

As the Key Bridge shrank into the rearview mirror that weekend, she told him the idea of death was starting to scare her. Did he share that fear, she asked?

"He told me, calmly, 'The only thing I'm scared of is to die without being able to ask God for forgiveness.'"

She wonders, now, about his last moments before the Dali struck the bridge. If he saw the ship coming. If he knew something was wrong. If he had the chance to talk to his crew.

During the seconds his red truck was in free fall and then sinking below the water, did he ask God for forgiveness?

"It tortures me not knowing what his last moments were like, if he had that chance, if he didn't have that chance," she said. "It fills me with fear because I know it was his last wish."

Mariela is facing a tough road. Her mother has to return to Mexico by December. Mariela is trying to get her GED, knowing she has roughly 15 months of continued community aid to plan for her family's future.

Eventually she may see money from the civil suits. But it could be years before those are resolved. It stings when people make snide comments about how she must be flush with cash from her husband's death.

Leading up to the collapse, Alejandro's work schedule had kept him too busy to stay as involved in the church as he would have liked, Mariela said. It was why he feared God's judgment, why he felt he needed to ask for forgiveness.

In August, Mariela and her oldest daughter were baptized in the church she attended with her husband.

Five months after he died in the dark, frigid Patapsco, Mariela slipped into baptismal waters as a way for her to keep his soul alive within her.