By Maria Prato, Staff Writer
MONROE — It was Mother’s Day 2009 when Theresa Wysokowski’s oldest son surprised her with some good news: She was going to be a grandmother.
And, friends and co-workers say, she couldn’t have been more elated.
”Theresa couldn’t wait for Mother’s Day this year; she just couldn’t wait until Sunday,” said Marie Schultz, Ms. Wysokowski’s friend and co-worker at Antonio’s Restaurant and Pizza.
Tragically, Ms. Wysokowski never made it to the brunch she had planned with the two newest additions to her family, the twin boys who she came to love so dearly.
Two days before Mother’s Day on May 7, Ms. Wysokowski, 48, was stabbed to death in her Perrineville Road home. Warren Burkey, who rented a room from Ms. Wysokowski’s mother, has been charged.
”My mother always said God takes the good first,” Ms. Schultz said. “Her world was her family. My heart is absolutely broken.”
Married to her high school sweetheart three decades ago, Ms. Wysokowski’s proudest accomplishment was her family.
She spent her days off from work attending to her children and grandchildren, visiting the local schools as a class mom, participating in her daughter’s Parent-Teacher-Organization and chatting with one of her best friends and dearest confidantes, her mother.
”She had what we all wish for,” Ms. Schultz said. “Most people don’t have what Theresa had.”
Tuesday’s workday was the hardest yet for Ms. Schultz, who, for the first time, was not able to take over for her friend at the end of Ms. Wysokowski’s afternoon shift at Antonio’s.
”Every day I relieved her, she had more pictures of her grandbabies,” she said. “The customers are devastated. Everyone’s in a state of shock.”
Antonio’s employees circled the restaurant Tuesday, looking a little lost, with several casting their sad eyes to the floor and simply saying “she was beautiful.”
These are just a handful of the people in the area whose lives were touched by Ms. Wysokowski, a woman who called Jamesburg and Monroe home for most of her life.
Never was her impact felt more than at her funeral Thursday where a crowd of about 200 mourners packed Holy Trinity R.C. Church in Helmetta, all trying to say their final farewells to a fallen friend.
”Life is not ending, it’s only changing,” said the Rev. Stanley Jarosz, the pastor who spoke at her funeral. “Why this happened, I can’t say. That’s God’s providence. How do we solve a mystery that God reserves for himself?”
Ms. Wysokowski, who had been a parishioner for more than a decade, sent all three of her children through the church’s CCD program.
”She was a very warm and kind person,” the Rev. Jarosz said. “She tried to do the best for her family. She was a mother who really wished to bring her children closer to the Lord.”
Ms. Wysokowski’s family, hoping to honor her love of family, is asking that mourners make a donation in lieu of flowers to the Theresa Wysokowski Scholarship Fund, which will benefit her children. Checks can be made payable to LTL Financial with “Eric, Kurt and Sara Wysokowski” written in the memo line. Donations can be mailed to AXA Advisors, 10 Madison Ave., Morristown, N.J., 07960, attention Patrick McKay.
Ms. Wysokowski’s burial was Thursday afternoon at the St. James Cemetery in Jamesburg.
She is survived by her husband, Walter Wysokowski; her children, Eric Wysokowski, Kurt Wysokowski and Sarah Wysokowski; her grandchildren, Tyler Santalucia, Aiden Wysokowski and Andrew Wysokowski; her parents, Bernard Frishwasser and his wife, Susan, and Frances Cutrone; siblings, Tommy, Diane, Laurie and Estelle Cutrone, Amy O’Rourke and Marcy Martino; a mother-in-law, Georgeanna Wysokowski; and brothers- and sisters-in-law, Stephen, Elizabeth, Joe, Robert and Raymond Wysokowski.
