Jose and Rosie Garcia tried to move back home and pick up the pieces, but they are nearly paralyzed by grief. Starting over is almost impossible for the two survivors who are . . . : Haunted by Memories

By MICHAEL QUINTANILLA

May 31, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

On June 23 of last year, Jose Garcia was driving his motor home in Northern Mexico when a propane tank exploded, killing his wife, four sons and two other relatives. Only Garcia, his daughter Rosie and a family friend survived. Rosie, who suffered third-degree burns over 70% of her body, recuperated for several months at the home of a relative. In December, the Garcias made the traumatic move back to their Valinda home, but their lives are still unsettled. This is one in a series of stories about their struggle to recover. Standing under the canopy of a cottonwood tree, Rosie Garcia keeps her eyes on her fatheras he sweeps dry leaves and grass from the photographs engraved on the family tombstone.

“My littlest brother, Joey, would always follow my dad. He was my dad’s shadow,” says Rosie. She looks away, trying to hold back the tears.

“C’mon, papi, let’s go.”

Jose Garcia motions for a little more time at the marble slab that bears the names of his wife, Gina, and sons Tony, Richie, Ruben and Joey. Rosie slowly heads for the car, pausing twice to glance at her father standing in silence at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Rowland Heights.

“This has been a tough month, real tough,” she says.

“Mother’s Day was May 10, Tony turned 16 on May 13, and Ruben turned 9 on May 25.”

And six days ago, Rosie turned 15.

But unlike last year, there was no huge cake to feed a family of seven. There was no choir of brothers singing “Happy Birthday” in English and Spanish. No pinata party with her mother blindfolding the kids.

“Imagine not having your mother and brothers with you on your birthday,” Rosie says. “I can’t imagine anything worse.”

Neither can her father.

Since the accident, he and Rosie have tried to cope with their loss by getting temporary counseling and returning--briefly--to work and school. But nothing, they say, has helped them to start over.

Garcia’s once-active life--filled with baseball practice and music lessons for his sons and church activities--is now defined by boredom and an urge to wander. Jose and Rosie sometimes hit the road on a whim, driving to other Southern California locations to visit relatives or to Texas or Mexico.

Rosie has gained weight and spends hours each day in front of the TV.

“Sometimes,” she says, “I feel like running away and hiding.”

Jose had hoped that their return to the house in Valinda would help both of them re-establish some kind of normalcy in their lives. Rosie would return to school; he would return to his job as a night-shift custodian at a Pasadena supermarket.

But that normalcy still escapes them.

Says Alexandria Garcia, Jose’s sister: “Anything that my brother and Rosie start, they don’t follow it through because they feel they don’t have anything to live for.”

Indeed, Rosie resumed her classes at Workman High School in the City of Industry but lasted only two weeks; Jose worked for two months and then went back on disability.

Rosie says she couldn’t stand going to school, “knowing that my brothers aren’t with me or that my mother won’t be there when I come home.”

Her 38-year-old father struggled at work.

“It made me too depressed,” he says. “Now I have lost my family, why should I go to work? I have lost what I have loved most in my life.

“It’s not an excuse, it is the way I feel. You see, I don’t feel happiness anywhere.”

Dr. Richard Grossman, director of the burn unit at Sherman Oaks Community Hospital and Rosie’s physician, says the Garcias have had to confront “the utmost tragedy.”

“They have lost those whom they loved the most,” says Grossman, who continues to direct Rosie’s reconstructive surgery treatment. “They realize that life goes on, but even the simplest of things, such as buying a loaf of bread, is a painful reminder of the life they used to have. They need time to heal.”

Jose will continue to receive disability until July, and then, he says, he will look for a job. He may be looking in Port Isabel, Tex., a small coastal community. That’s where he and Rosie plan on spending the summer working with lawyers who may file a lawsuit in connection with the motor home accident, which occurred about 60 miles south of Laredo, Tex.

Says Ray Marchan, a Brownsville, Tex., attorney handling the case, “We were able to get the remains of the motor home from Mexico and turned them over to explosion and propane valve gas experts who have reviewed the motor home thoroughly and have it in storage in San Antonio.”

Marchan first met Garcia when he helped with the transportation of the family’s bodies from Mexico to California. Now the two men are friends and Marchan hopes that Texas offers a respite for the Garcias. “They want to get away from the house (in Valinda),” he says. “Here they can start with a clean slate.”

Garcia also hopes their summer residency--although temporary--will be therapeutic.

“My daughter and I can’t live in our house,” he says. “I thought that we could, but it was filled with too many sad memories.”

Alexandria Garcia says, “They think they hear voices and the memories are too painful.”

For Rosie, the move was not only painful, it was frightening. “I don’t get depressed like my dad, I get scared, especially at night,” she says. “Sometimes I think I hear my brothers, but I know they’re not really there. Sometimes I hear noises at night, and I try to cover my ears with a pillow.”

Her father tries to comfort Rosie, telling her the noises are the wind or the dog running outside, but darkness weighs heavily on Jose as well.

“One night I couldn’t sleep,” he says. “I saw the (outside sensor) light go on. Outside, I saw my son, Tony, sort of looking at me.

“I talked to a priest and he said it was probably my imagination. And I said, ‘Well, I know what I saw. I know it was my son.’ Personally I feel a little better because I saw Tony. It was comforting.”

Garcia doesn’t plan on selling his home. Maybe, by summer’s end, he and Rosie will return to the house.

“And then maybe we won’t,” Rosie says.

“I’m sure we will,” Garcia says.

“We’ll see,” says his daughter.

“OK, Rosie, let’s take it day by day,” Garcia says, shaking his head. He then adds: “We argue a lot.”

“No, you argue, papi, “ Rosie says.

Garcia laughs. “See?”

He quarrels with Rosie because she’s not in school, because she sleeps too late, because she watches too much television, because she has gained weight. But Rosie says her father also spends his days watching TV as he fights his own depression and boredom.

Says Garcia: “I can’t force her to go back. She is going to have to want to do it on her own. I tell her that her mother would want her to go back and that it will be good for her future.”

“If you’re talking about school I’m going to go back,” Rosie interjects. “But right now there’s just too many problems.”

Grossman points out that the scars that Rosie carries are psychological as well as physical. “Every day Rosie looks in the mirror, she sees her face getting better and better, but all of the psychological pain is still there. She needs someone who has the compassion and understanding who can help her deal with her loss and get on with her life.

“The burn patient is always looking at the eyes of the person who is talking to them, waiting to see if they are going to wander from eye contact to the scars,” Grossman says.

“Rosie is waiting and looking for that friend whose eyes don’t drift to the scars.”

Sometimes that friend is her father. “I understand what you are going through,” Garcia tells his daughter, and then hugs her.

But for a time, Rosie says, her father turned to drinking to escape his depression.

“I got angry with him once,” she says. “I told him, ‘Who told you you could drink?’ and he said to me, ‘You’re not my dad. You don’t have to tell me what to do.’ That made me mad. And then he went outside and he came back in with a headache. Remember, papi? ‘ “

Garcia nods.

“Now since that time he doesn’t drink that much,” Rosie says.

“It’s real hard on him, harder on him than for me I think,” she continues. “I know because he cries all the time.”

Rosie’s uncle, Jorge Ignacio Garcia, says he is worried about his niece and his brother.

“Emotionally, my brother has problems. He was so dedicated to the children. He was always busy, on the go from one place to another. He is missing all that activity.

“I wish this tragedy had never happened,” says Jorge Garcia. “I wish it could be like it was before. My whole family wishes that, but that can’t be possible. We can only hope my brother and his daughter can go forward with their lives.”

Jose and Rosie are trying to “go forward.”

Rosie talks about starting a diet soon. She has been taken off all her medication and has begun to receive the first of three series of steroid shots in her arms, neck and back for the prevention of skin scarring, says Grossman.

“She’s coming along. It has been a tough struggle,” says Grossman.

Rosie underwent six weeks of intensive care, physical therapy and counseling and continues to wear compression garments, including gloves and a body vest that prevents her skin from swelling.

Her hair is slowly inching its way to her shoulders. “I want it to get back to my waist,” Rosie says. “I hope it’s that long when I return to school next year.”

She glances at her father.

“Yes, papi, you know I am going to school next year.”

Talk like that pleases Garcia.

And so does the prospect of joining a church in Texas. “I’m going to play my guitar there,” he says.

Garcia is even reconsidering counseling for himself and his daughter.

“Sometimes I think it is a good thing,” he says. “But you want to know the real truth? I don’t think anybody can help. I think what is going to help me and Rosie is only time. Time heals.”