The son of a 80-year-old woman who died in a fire that tore through her Bronx apartment building hugged her extra tight when leaving her home a week earlier — not knowing it would be his last goodbye.
Ana Serrano was home with her other son when the blaze erupted on the second floor of her building on E. 169th St. near Morris Ave. about 2:45 p.m. April 16.
The octogenarian suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, a degenerative neurological muscular disorder that left her unable to walk. She used a wheelchair to get around and a couple years ago doctors told her one of her lungs was not fully functioning, making it difficult for her to breathe.
Her 45-year-old son, Isaí Serrano, had last seen her a week before.
“Right before I left I gave her the strongest hug,” he told the Daily News, choking up with tears.
“I don’t know what came over me. I question myself why I did this … Not knowing that was going to be the last time I saw her.
“I spent the morning into the afternoon with her that day,” he added. “She had a doctor’s appointment and it was virtual. I said, ‘Hey I’m off [work]. I’m gonna come to the house and we’ll get on the virtual meeting together.”
After the fire broke out, a neighbor knocked on Ana’s third-floor apartment door, alerting her to the blaze, Isaí said.
“[My brother] was there when the fire broke and he was the one who did the best he could to get her out of the building,” Isaí said.
“It’s tough to endure something of this nature — to think about the way that it happened.”
Medics rushed Serrano to BronxCare Health System in critical condition.
“When we got to the hospital she still had a pulse,” Isaí said. “She was breathing, but not on her own. We were able to sit with her until the last pulse.”
Ana was declared dead close to midnight the day after the fire, her son said. Doctors told the family it was likely smoke inhalation that caused her death but they had not yet gotten an official cause of death from the city Medical Examiner.
Despite her medical issues, the family had high hopes of longevity for Serrano. In recent years they set her up with an oxygen tank at home, which drastically improved her quality of life, the son said.
Fire marshals are still working to determine the cause of the fire.
Isaí described his mother as a “joyful” person who never complained about the chronic pain she endured.
“My brother told me they had just been joking around prior to this fire coming through. They were watching a show. They were joking around and he was making her laugh. That was her every day. Always smiling through it all,” he said. “Always a good thing to say. Always caring for everyone else. That’s the type of woman she was. Selfless.”
Born in Juncos, Puerto Rico, Ana in the 1970s moved to New York, where she met her husband at a church event in Brooklyn, fell in love and married him shortly after.
Serrano was diagnosed with CMT in her 50s and her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease around the same time.
“With her own ailments, she was a trooper,” Isaí recalled. “She picked [my father] up from the bed, helped him, because it was very immobilizing for him, even though she was going through her own levels of immobility.”
Though she never formally worked, Serrano was a talented seamstress who would sew and mend clothes for people. Isaí remembers as a young kid accompanying her to fabric stores buy patterns and watching her carefully as she taught him to sew and crochet.
“She liked to write poems, her son said. “A birthday card, instead of just writing a message, she would write a poem. She loved doing that.”
Widowed in 2005, she eventually she could no longer get herself to church.
“To navigate her out of the building became very difficult to do,” her son said. “She would join the (church) Zoom meetings. Local church people would come over to her house and just be with her and hold prayer services with her. They were committed to still making her feel a part of it.”
Serrano’s family celebrated her 80th birthday on Thanksgiving last year.
“We wanted to make a big event for her,” Isaí explained.
“Thanksgiving and Christmas were big [for her.] I would bring her over to my house for Thanksgiving and she would make the stuffing ahead of time for the turkey. Funny enough, this past November she told me, ‘Take a video of me making the stuffing. I want the family to know how I make it, because they’re always asking me.’ So we have a video of her making the stuffing.”
Serrano leaves behind four granddaughters and two grandsons in addition to her two sons and a daughter.
“It’s hard for sure. It’s not what we expected,” Isaí said. “We knew she was 80 years old and we knew that time was fleeting… so we cherish those moments.”
With Sheetal Banchariya and Thomas Tracy