Mary Jane Veloso excited to wear her funeral dress for Mother’s Day

Laughing so hard

Laurente recounted the days before the execution when Mary Jane would exchange jokes and banter with her loved ones on Nusakambangan, which the world now knows as Indonesia’s execution island.

Mary Jane poked fun at her brother, Christopher, and Michael Candelaria, her ex-husband and father of her children, who had taken their first-ever plane ride to see her before her execution.

“What did you do on the plane. Did you make a mess?” Mary Jane asked them.

Candelaria related how he didn’t know where to put his food and drinks on the plane. He said he made a complaint about what he thought was dessert packed like a “jelly ace” for being so bland, but later found that it was just plain water.

Candelaria had joined the family—Mary Jane’s parents Celia and Cesar, her siblings Laurente and Darling, and her two children—two days before the April 28 execution date.

They were “laughing so hard” they forgot how close Mary Jane’s death was, Laurente said.

“It was because of Mary Jane. She would not want us to cry,” she said.

Last image

On the final day, however, the family broke down when they were separated from Mary Jane as the latter was being taken to the place of execution.

But their last image of Mary Jane was a happy one, Laurente said.

“She was standing before the closing gate looking at us, smiling. That smile on the poster, that was the smile she left us there,” Laurente said.

Five minutes before 12:25 a.m., Mary Jane thought she would be joining the eight others sentenced to die for drug smuggling.

Spiritual strength

“See you in heaven,” was Mary Jane’s last words to the death-row inmates passing by her, according to Laurente.

Laurente admires her sister’s display of strength, attributing it to her religiosity even when they were children.

“She was the one who would always ask us to pray during meals. We always assign someone in the family to lead the prayers,” she said.

Since 2011, Mary Jane has been seeking spiritual advice from German Jesuit Fr. Bernhard Kieser, she said.

It had been agreed that Kieser would be with Mary Jane during her final moments.