October 14, 2026, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM Viewing & Rosary
Mountain View Funeral Home
4100 Steilacoom Blvd SW, Lakewood, WA 98499
Come any time during the viewing. The family prays the Rosary together at 1:00 PM.
Patrick Reyes Cabrera was born on July 20, 1955, in the village of Piti, Guam, to Jose Quenga Cabrera and Ignacia Reyes Acosta Cabrera, one of nine children in a house that was never quiet. Raised in the faith by a grandmother who did not accept excuses, he served as an altar boy at Assumption of Our Lady Church in Piti — a parish founded the very year he was born. Family lore holds that when he came home one Sunday crying over a bloodied shin from a bike wreck, she taped it up and sent him back to Mass. That was Patrick for the rest of his life: you show up, you serve, and you don't make a fuss about it.
In September 1975, fresh out of school, he joined the United States Army. He served twenty years as an infantryman and, from 1988, as a drill sergeant — a job that suited a man who believed a 10 o'clock start meant 10 o'clock. His career carried the family from Germany to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to Washington, home to Guam, and back to Washington, where he retired in August 1995. Two years later he began a second career with the United States Postal Service, delivering for seventeen years before retiring for good. Two employers in forty years. He was not a man who needed much variety.
He married Mary on June 17, 1985, and they spent forty-one years together. Ask Mary what made him happy and the answer is simple, because he was: breakfast after Sunday Mass, every Sunday, no exceptions. A backyard full of kids and grandkids and a grill full of ribs he refused to write the recipe for. A Minnesota Vikings game on the television — a loyalty he picked up in 1969, when the Vikings were the team Guam got on the air, and never once reconsidered.
His faith was the quiet center of all of it. He and Mary prayed the rosary together every day, and whatever devotion she took up — the Divine Mercy chaplet, the novenas — he was beside her for it. In Germany in 1985, given a temporary house with more bedrooms than they knew what to do with, the family turned one of them into a prayer room. He wanted nothing more for his children and grandchildren than that they would know the Church he loved.
Patrick is survived by his wife, Mary; his children and grandchildren; his siblings; and nieces, nephews, and cousins in Washington, Guam, and beyond. He was preceded in death by his parents and some of his siblings.
He was a simple, humble man who asked for little and gave his family everything. We will miss him at breakfast.