My mother used to watch a telenovela in which the theme song was Amor Eterno. It was her favorite song and was the song at her funeral.
It has been twenty years since my mother passed away, but the song still brings tears as I miss my mother; every morning, I light a candle in memory of her.
“Amor Eterno” (Eternal Love)
Rocio Durcal, the Spanish singer, made this song famous. But Juan Gabriel wrote it for his late mother. As he described it, it was more than a song, it was a “meditation on love.”
It’s a song that’s become essential to the Latin American songbook, a way for Latinos to refuse to say goodbye at funerals.
“Prefiero estar dormido que despierto / de tanto que me duele que no estés,” he sings. “Como quisera, ay / que tu vivieras / que tus ojitos jamas se hubieran / cerrado nunca y estar mirándolos / amor eterno.”
A rough translation:
Source“I prefer to sleep, because I am so hurt that you are not here,” he sings. “Oh, how I wish that you were here. That your eyes had never closed and that I’d be looking into them.”