Emotional farewell to tunnel victim

VASQUEZ DE CORONADO, Costa Rica -- The little boy covered his ears to block out the sounds, but the wails only grew louder.

Milena Del Valle's body had finally arrived from Boston and lay in a white coffin at St. Jorge funeral home. Morticians stood nearby, waiting to take it to a church. But first, Del Valle's three children wanted to see her. They looked inside the coffin and began to scream.

``Mami, Mami," yelled Jeremy Ibarra Mora, 17, Del Valle's youngest son, as his sister, Raquel, 23, and brother, Kaleb, 19, held him. The scene overwhelmed Del Valle's 4-year-old grandson, who cupped his ears as a family friend carried him away.

Del Valle, 38, was crushed to death more than a week ago when ceiling panels in the Interstate 90 tunnel connector fell on the Buick sedan in which she was riding. Yesterday, her children, who had last seen her in May, followed her coffin to a sprawling evangelical church north of San Jose, the capital city.

``God will help us figure out a way to move forward," her daughter, Raquel Ibarra Mora , said to those gathered at her mother's funeral. ``Pray you don't have to go through something like this."

Milena Del Valle's death has stirred anger in Boston but what was striking about her burial yesterday was its simplicity. About 100 people gathered in a hilly region near coffee fields and tiny metal-roofed homes to bury her.

Only family members spoke. And the picture they offered of Milena Del Valle was of a devoted Christian, a baker, and an artist who welded iron into ornate clocks and heavy candelabras.

``She wasn't some poor little thing who went to the United States because she was starving," said Marta Mora, her aunt. ``She wanted to get somewhere."

When she was living in Costa Rica, Del Valle tried to sell her artwork to rich Costa Ricans through a business she ran with her first husband. But the couple never sold enough pieces to live on, and Del Valle took a job cleaning houses.

After 12 years of marriage, the relationship began to fall apart. Her husband, Jorge Ibarra Caruso, did not get along well with her children, whom she had in a previous relationship, said Miriam Vargas, Del Valle's mother. She began to yearn for a better life for herself and her children.

Around 2001, she separated from her husband, left her children with her mother, and flew to New Jersey to find work and be close to relatives in New York. Less than a year later, she moved to Boston after she was offered a better-paying job as a nanny. It was there she met her second husband, Angel Del Valle, a native of Puerto Rico.

The two bonded through their Christian faith and their love of cooking. She became an enthusiast of Puerto Rican food and learned how to prepare his favorite dishes. She gained weight but did not seem to care, said her sister-in-law, Ines Nelson, who lives in Dorchester.

``I'm chubby, but I'm happy," Melina Del Valle told her.

In May, Milena Del Valle brought her 46-year-old husband to meet her children. He impressed them with his affection for their mother. He had planned to go sightseeing in Costa Rica, but instead spent his vacation money on improvements at Miriam Vargas's house. He fixed the wiring and expanded a roof over her patio so she could have space to hang laundry on rainy days.

During the funeral yesterday, Raquel Ibarra Mora stood at the front of the church and spoke directly Angel Del Valle, who was seated near her mother's casket. She thanked him for his devotion to her mother.

``You are in our hearts forever," she told him.

While many of the family members, especially Milena Del Valle's children, sobbed during the service, Angel Del Valle did not address those gathered.

After the hourlong service, a procession of about a dozen cars and vans rode through the narrow streets to La Piedad cemetery in the town of Moravia.

The mourners gathered underneath a gazebo. Milena Del Valle's father and brother, aided by cemetery and funeral workers, carried her casket to a plot in the cemetery: a small field with no headstones.

The mood was sometimes tense. Before the burial, Raquel Ibarra Mora asked relatives not to say anything critical about the family or any decision that the family makes. Two Florida lawyers, David Gold and Alan Goldfarb, who have been hired by Milena Del Valle's children, attended the burial. Goldfarb, who wore a pin with a picture of Del Valle, said the family was still considering whether to file a lawsuit.

Goldfarb said he had not spoken yet to Angel Del Valle.

The decision to hire lawyers surprised Angel Del Valle, said his sister. He did not want to even think about hiring a lawyer, and instead has been focused on burying his wife, she added.

``He believes this was an accident," she said, ``that it was an act of God."

At the cemetery, Angel Del Valle's eyes never left his wife's coffin. As the casket was lowered into the ground and a young man began to play a guitar and sing a hymn, Milena Del Valle's children began to sob .

Angel Del Valle remained silent. As his wife's mother and children began to sing along with the guitar player, he turned and walked away from the crowd to the parking lot.

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.