Home Sweet Home: Sherrie Gomez

Sherrie Gomez sits outside on a wet, windy December night behind the protection of the tall stucco walls that guard her courtyard. Her home is decked out for Christmas. Branches of pine sit on the mantle and cacti made of red lights bedazzle the front gate.
But in Gomez’s home, the Christmas decorations somehow seem beside the point. Lovingly selected details grace every corner of her house, which is also an events venue and hotel, called Casa Mariposa on South Padre Island.
Centuries-old sandstone panels from India are inlaid in the stucco walls, creating stenciled tricks with the morning light.
A bathroom sink is supported with a curvacenous tree trunk. A fountain gives new life to the discarded vessel that once held holy water in a Mexican church.
Casa Mariposa is now both Gomez’s business and home. But in the narrative of her life, it is the masterpiece that she created as a monument to the love between her and her late husband who passed away in early 2008 before Gomez had finished decorating the home.
Steve Gomez was 49 when he died. He had recovered from a massive stroke in 2001 only to suffer a second in 2007 that led to his death a year later.
If you want to know Sherrie Gomez, that first image of her, sitting with her hot chocolate on the patio of a palatial home, is a bit deceptive. Gomez never aspired to live in a grand house.
The life that she lives now as a 43-year-old is not what she imagined growing up in a Brownsville trailer park. Then as now, she was concerned with beauty and authenticity rather than wealth.
As a child she took her mother’s shoe polish and turned medicine bottles into painted vases for wildflowers. Years later when she was living on the brain injury floor with her husband, Gomez brought beautiful things into the hospital room to brighten some of their darkest days.
She has always tried to find the light in the darkness, even if she had to create it herself.
“It’s hard after all the stuff I’ve been through to find your self-worth, but you do,” Gomez said. “It’s hard to validate all the good that happens because so much bad happened.”
Unlike some survivors of loss, talking about her late husband is easy for Gomez. When she talks about Steve, she seems to see the moments of their life before her in all their vivid detail.
She remembers their vacations around the world and throughout Mexico. She sees Steve’s infectious smile. She watches him walk into the Sheraton the first time she saw him, walk up to her 19-year-old self, and order an iced tea.
“I thought it was strange he would order an iced-tea to go, because people don’t really do that at a hotel,” Gomez remembered. “And then he started coming in every day, and then for refills, so he could see me again.”
These days Gomez concentrates on the good years they had together. She still thinks about the year she spent as his nurse after his second stroke.
She still remembers the morning before the stroke, when he slipped out of bed to work out at the gym, with a smile on his face.
And she still remembers sitting right where she is now, looking out at her courtyard, after his death. In those days it was a depressing weed-filled lot, the ground covered in black fabric. After his death Gomez had no money left and wondered how she would remain in this place, her monument to those 20 years of love, with no income.
So she created Casa Mariposa, the butterfly house. She still sees it as her metamorphoses.
“It’s got good energy,” Gomez said. “Love is in the details. Everything you see is made with love.”
Weddings and celebrations fill the courtyard now and granite has replaced the black fabric. It’s hard to imagine that this coral-colored oasis wasn’t designed specifically as an event venue.
Today Gomez tries to live by the phrases that her husband used to say: “It’s all good,” “The party comes with me,” and “There are no problems, only solutions.”
Gomez has found her own solutions. The home with the fortress-like walls could have felt like a prison after Steve’s death.
Instead it became a sanctuary of healing, laughter and hope. And the little girl painting with shoe polish has grown up into a woman whose tools may be more refined, but whose intent remains the same.