I imagine I always knew this day would come but I had a piece of me that thought — or maybe hoped — it wouldn’t. I don’t even know where to begin.

How do you put on paper the love you have, how do you capture her sense of humor, her love of music and singing, for black and white classic movies, all things Elvis, or her laugh — oh lord how we have laughed — but most of all the love she gave us all. My God, how she loved. I can go into detail about this event or that event in her life, but really what I want to say is that our mom was a fighter and survivor from the moment she took her first breath on August 12,1954 until she took her last breath on June 7, 2026.

She made a conscious decision to make the lives of her children nothing like the life she grew up in. She chose love over continued generational trauma, and for that we will always be grateful.

There will never be a way to capture who our mom was or how much we love her in this message, so yet again I find myself not knowing where to go with this. So I will list the love in her life.

Our mom is survived by her three children — Virginia Smith, Joshua Miraglia, Tiffany Baldwin — and their significant others; her six beloved grandchildren, Kendall Smith, Hunter Smith, Loerlei Martinez-Miraglia, Dominic Baldwin, Landon Smith, Tarah Baldwin and thier significant others (her bonus grandkids); as well as her two great-grandchildren, Autumn “Bella Girl” Owens and Braelynn “Brea Brea” Smith.

While the beautiful humans listed above were her whole world, she had a very big world of people she loved through out her life, starting with her siblings, our amazing aunts and uncle — Laurie Sachs (Terry), nephew Lindsey and niece Katie; Patrick Wollitz (Tamara), nephew Travis and niece Ashley; Mandy Fox (Gary), nephews Grey and Liam, niece Ryan and their significant others.

Mom was blessed with life-long friendships spanning 60 years. Pam “Nana” Mattot has been by our mom’s side through every happy, beautiful, amazing, rough, tragic and worst moments of her life, and gave our mom support and love. She is her true soul sister. Aunt Darlene and Aunt Debbie Jones, all I can say is that we dont have many memories that dont include you. Those ‘80s were really something! Your friendship with our mom will always be something I look back on and know what real love is between friends who are family.

She is preceded in death by her mother, Judy Perkins, and husband, Ernest Miraglia.

There are so many people who she loved and shared her life with and while you may not be listed here please dont think your part was any less special to her. Like I said in the beginning, I could never put it all into words on paper.

Cynthia Ann Miraglia (White) had many titles — Sister, Aunt, Cousin, Granny Hunny, Gran, GiGi — and they all meant the world to her, but her favorite one was Mama. Our lives will forever be changed but what won’t change is our love for her and her love for us. She loved us from our first breath and we will love her until our last.

Until we see you again, Mama.

Our family would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to Hospice of Humboldt and Mom’s care team. Their compassion, support and dedication helped make a very difficult time a little easier for all of us. If you would like to honor our mother’s memory, we ask that you consider making a donation in her name to our local Hospice, whose care and kindness meant so much to her and our family.

This message was shared and approved by Cyndy :) HA!