BAKERSFIELD, CA - It was a solemn send-off for a soldier. Army Specialist Moises J. Gonzalez died in a vehicle rollover accident in Afghanistan on April 25th. He was 29 years old, and leaves behind three sons and two wives.
"I'm sad, but I know in my heart that's not him," Ruth Bayona, Gonzalez's wife. "I feel like he's still in Afghanistan, that's how I feel."
Ruth Bayona of Bakersfield married Gonzalez in 2010 in Las Vegas, unaware that he was already married to Darlene Garcia of Los Angeles nine years ago.
The two sat on the same row at Gonzalez's funeral in Saint Matthias Catholic Church in Huntington Park.
"My baby always smiled, he was healthy, and to see him like that breaks my heart," Bayona said.
Garcia could be barely speak after the funeral. She held onto her son, Gonzalez's first child and let her sister do the talking.
"It hurts so much to see my nephew go through this," said Paula Ojeda, Gonzalez's sister-in-law. "He's going to go through this a lot for the rest of his life."
It hurt Bayona to see Garcia given Gonzalez's flag off his casket.
"For him his son the first born," Ojeda said. "He's definitely going to want to keep the flag."
Bayona says there was too much tension in the air on her husband's homegoing ceremony. The wives only exchanged glances. Bayona has Gonzalez's youngest son, Moises Gonzalez, Jr., and a third woman was there, the mother of Gonzalez's second son.
But more than the multiple families, Gonzalez's father wants his son to be remembered as a soldier with a big heart.
"He was an exceptional son who always gave his heart to the world and to his country. He was my only son, he was my baby," said Carlos Gonzalez. "Like everything in life, we are with his family, with all of them."
Spc. Gonzalez was buried in the Inglewood Cemetery near his grandparents.
