Margarita Carbajal (de) Solis, 79, a longtime resident of Pittsburg, CA, entered into everlasting life with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, on Wednesday, December 16, 2015. She is survived by her loving husband, Estanislao Solis, and children Lettie Solis and Henry Solis. and two grandsons whom she loved dearly, Eddie and Michael Carrillo, originally from Pittsburg and now residing in West Sacramento, and one brother Jose Carbajal from San Diego. She is also survived my many cousins, nieces, nephews, and great nieces and nephews

Margarita was preceded in death by her beloved daughter Margarita Solis earlier this year and her very dear sister Abigail Carbajal and dear nephew and friend, Manual Carbajal. Her family will always remember her as a kind and loving wife, mother, and grandmother with a beautiful smile who encouraged them to pursue their goals in life, education, and mostly importantly in their faith. She lived life with great joy, love and passion regardless of her numerous and long term health complications.

Margarita was born in Piedra Amarilla, Jalisco, on October 27, 1936 to Jose Carbajal and Margarita Carbajal Cervantes. She has one surviving brother, Jose Carbajal, and is preceded in death by her parents, brothers Crespin, Rafael, and Luis and sisters Abigail, Ana, Catalina, Genoveva and an additional brother and sister. At a very young age, her family moved to Tijuana, Baja California. She attended school and in her teens and early twenties she worked for a small boutique where she learned how to speak English interacting with tourists. It was in Tijuana where she met the love of her life, Estanislao Solis. Margarita and Estanislao where married on August 7, 1960, and just recently had celebrated their 55 wedding anniversary. One month after her marriage, her mother passed away from cancer. As a newly-wed bride, her husband immigrated her and brought her to Pittsburg, California where they established a loving home and raised three children and two grandchildren.

Margarita was a loving and caring wife, mother, grandmother and friend. Her most important job was being a good wife, mother and grandmother. She took pride in being a homemaker and filling her home with love and kindness. She helped raised her two grandsons, Eddie and Michael and also worked as a babysitter for neighboring families and friends during the 1980s and 90s and was a dishwasher for a short period of time for the Pittsburg Elks Lodge. In July of 1999, Margarita, accompanied by her children and grandchildren, passed the test for citizenship and was sworn in as a citizen of the United States.

She was active in her children's and grandchildren's education and enjoyed being a room mother each year in their classrooms. She also supported her son at all his peanut league baseball games and practices. Being an active room mother during her children's elementary years at Heights Elementary School, she would participate in classroom activities, field trips and often baked and even demonstrated (along with neighbor Dolores Zamora) how to make flour tortillas for the students in the classrooms. Every year she honored the teachers and principal of Heights by inviting them to her home for a delicious chicken mole lunch. The teachers and principal would look forward to this annual luncheon. Her children's friends were always welcomed in their home and she along with her husband were known as Mama Solis and Papa Solis. She took great pride in being a wife and mother and sent her husband to work with a nice homemade meals which included burritos and abondigas, a Mexican meatball soup. She was an excellent cook--so good that her husband's burritos would often disappear from his lunchbox and be replaced with ordinary sandwiches. She was well known for her specialty dishes which included, menudo, pozole, chile rellenos, refried beans, pork spareribs in chile verde con nopales and her awesome lasagna.

Family traditions and faith were very important to her. She looked forward to celebrating the holidays - Thanksgiving, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Birthdays and Anniversaries. For each holiday she made her specials dinners. Sundays after Church would be family days, with afternoons watching movie classic, mostly comedies, both in English (Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra classics) and Spanish movies (Cantinflas, India Maria, Vicente Fernandez classics). She was well known for her delicious tamales and during the 1970s along with the help of her sister Abi, would make many dozens of tamales on Christmas eve for her husbands co-workers at the U.S. Steel Mill. Family outings were usually to the SF Giants and Oakland Athletics ballpark, where she would pack homemade bean and chorizo burritos, where on more than one occasion, fans at the stadium offered to buy. For each one of her family member's birthday, she made it a point to make each of them their favorite dish, and to the very end she was in the kitchen cooking what she could making her last dishes of refried beans, huevitos en chile verde, and caldo de res for her family and guests and passing down the family secrets to her savory dishes.

Margarita, along with her husband and family, had been a member of the Good Shepherd Church in Pittsburg, California since the early 1960s. Margarita was a woman that lived her life by faith and exemplified the fruits of the spirit-love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance--and the Love of Christ flowed through her. She welcomed everyone into her home with her beautiful smile and great joy and made anyone visiting feel loved. Her home was always opened to family and friends and she always made sure she had some food and refreshments to offer her guests. Whenever anyone of her extended family members or friends were sick or hospitalized she and her husband always made an effort to visit them in the hospital, no matter the distance. Even though she endured longsuffering with chronic illness and pain, she never ceased praying for others in their time of need and always followed up with phone calls to check up on their well being.

She trusted in God and lived by faith and believed strongly in the power of prayer, she endured illness and chronic pain for more than a decade with unshakable faith. In the early 2000s she began to be ill with repeated weekly visits to the emergency room until she was diagnosed in 2004 with a tumor in her abdomen the size of a football, later in 2004 she was diagnosed with 4th stage lymphoma cancer and survived cancer, she had many other life threatening events, but throughout all those near death events, her faith never wavered and she always placed her life in God's hand and at his will. Her amazing faith proved so strong that she made miraculous recoveries over and over again.

She loved life and lived it to the fullest regardless of her infirmities and accepted her suffering with amazing grace. It is because of her love for life and faith in God that she desired to push forward and through every obstacle in her life, including the loss of her daughter earlier this year. Never did she question God's will in her life and accepted the cross she was given. In all her years of sickness not once did she ever say "why me." Furthermore, through her sickness and longsuffering, through her many visits to the emergency room, hospitalizations, hospice care and through her weekly dialysis treatments she was able to be a witness to others the virtues of incredible unwavering faith with the warmth of love and the glow from her beautiful and vivacious smile and great sense of humor she offered to those around her. Despite her frail body, she treasured every moment with her husband and family and lived life to the fullest and enjoyed eating out at restaurants, visiting her grandchildren in Sacramento, going to the movies, traveling to see family and friends, and shopping at her favorite store, ROSS. When she was not watching the Warriors she enjoyed watching Family Feud. Her favorite color was red, flower-red carnation, movie: Beaches, loved gazing at the moon.

Margarita was a faithful Catholic and follower of Jesus Christ, a loving and devoted wife, a wise and gentle mother, a supportive and cheering nana, a caring sister, a kind and encouraging aunt, a dear friend. She woke up every morning thanking and praising God and went to be everynight praying for her family and all those in need. She was a fan of the Golden State Warriors (enjoyed watching the games and following Stephen Curry,). She was also a Giants/A's fan, and a 49er fan, But she was the biggest fan for Christ, her faith, her family, her husband, children, and especially her two grandsons and her extended family.

Cuando la vida nos separa de un ser querido el recuerdo de su sonrisa, amor y amistad es la mejor manera de seguir adelante y mantenerla viva en nuestro corazón y mente. Que no se olvide nunca cuánto te amamos porque fuiste un gran ser humano (esposa, madres, nana, hija, hermana, tía, amiga) Nos llenaste de amor en tu paso por este mundo y nos contagiaste con tu espíritu, sonrisa y amore. Fuiste un ejemplo de valentía y fortaleza ante las adversidades. Descanse en paz querida Margarita Solis Carbajal -10/27/1936 - 12/16/2015 Her wonderful and gentle soul will forever remain in our hearts until we see her again.

Services will be held on Monday, December 28 at Pittsburg Funeral Chapel beginning with a private family viewing from 3 pm to 5 pm, Rosary from 5 pm to 6 pm and a Victory Outreach Service from 6 pm to 8 pm. On Wednesday, December 29 Catholic mass will be held at 10 am at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Pittsburg, CA, followed by burial at Holy Cross Cemetery, Antioch, with a reception to follow at The Parish Hall of the Church of the Good Shepherd.

The family would like to thank the wonderful renal technicians, nurses and staff at Davita Dialysis in Pittsburg, CA for their efforts, dedication and kindness in caring for Margarita over the past couple of years.