Angel "Pito" Rodriquez

The Sound That He Made

Angel Rodriquez, known to those who loved him as “Pito,” passed away February 3, at the age of 33, reunited with his maternal grandmother Nereida Cintron and leaving behind his mother Elisa Santos, stepfather John Santos, sister Angelis Ramos, and four children—Adeliz, Isaiah, Janiyaliz, and Zaveon Rodriguez—who will continue to answer when they hear the sound “boop boop” echo in rooms he’ll never enter again.

He kept a journal. Not every day, and not for future generations to read. When something pressed against his chest—anger, confusion, feelings without names—he would open the pages and write until the pressure eased. The mother of two of his children watched him do this enough times that she bought her own journal. She still writes in it. He never told her to. He just showed her what it looked like to turn feeling into something you could hold in your hands.

On his shelves: video games stacked in careful rows, Funko Pops still in their boxes, manga volumes he’d just started collecting. He liked things that stayed put, things you could arrange and rearrange, that built into something visible. When his sister came over, they’d compare collections the way other people compared notes. This was a conversation they had without much talking—just showing, nodding, understanding that some people need to gather the world into sets they can see.

He left flowers on the kitchen table when no one was home. His sister and his mother would return to find them there—no note, no announcement. Just flowers, waiting.

“Do you love me?” he’d ask, and he meant it. Not fishing for compliments but checking, confirming, making sure the connection was still live. He asked everyone: his mother, his sister, his children, the mothers of his children. He needed to hear it said out loud, needed the reassurance that he wasn’t just present but seen. This wasn’t insecurity. This was someone who understood that love requires tending, that you can’t assume what isn’t spoken.

On Sundays, he showed up for dinner at his mother’s house. Whether he came for the food or the family, no one could say for certain, but he came. “My world,” he called her. When someone told him he’d have to leave someday, move out, make his own nest, he shook his head. “Nope. Never. Imma live with mom forever.” He meant it. Some men prove their independence by leaving. Angel proved his by staying, by choosing proximity to the person who mattered most.

When his children needed him, he came. Hospital waiting rooms, late-night calls, the ordinary and extraordinary emergencies of raising small humans—he showed up. “I got them for life,” he told their mothers, and he kept that promise in increments: showing up, listening, learning the particular code of each child’s needs. He called them with a sound, two syllables that meant I’m here: “Boop boop.” They knew what it meant. They still do.

He made radio noises—static and music mixed together, sounds that made children laugh. “Where’s your radio?” he’d ask, remembering which child made which sounds, cataloging their particular frequencies. This attention wasn’t casual. It was how he loved: by noticing, by remembering, by asking again.

The mothers of his children could make him angry. Of course they could. But he kept the lines open because the children needed them connected. People had opinions about these women, judgments they offered freely, but Angel held a different position. His feelings were separate from his responsibilities. The children came first. Everything else bent around that fact.

When someone else’s child needed surgery—twice—Angel was there. Steady. “I’m a pro in that,” he said, which was both true and kind. He told the mother she could call anytime. He loved that child as though biology was just a detail, as though fatherhood was a verb, not a noun.

“Let go of what you can’t control,” he’d say. Not as advice but as practiced knowledge. The stress was never worth it in the end. He’d learned to separate the weight of what he could carry from the weight of what he couldn’t, and he set the second kind down. This freed his hands for what mattered: his mother, his children, the people who needed him to show up.

His laugh was loud and unmistakable. He’d find the joke in most situations, press the button that made people crack open and release whatever they’d been holding too tight. This could irritate. But it could also save you—make you laugh when you’d forgotten how, shift the weight of a day that had gotten too heavy.

He gave everything he had, which sometimes wasn’t much in material terms but was always enough in the currency that mattered. If someone needed help, he showed up with empty hands and full attention. There were kindnesses he kept private, loves he never announced, promises he honored in silence.

What he left behind: journals others still keep, children who answer to “boop boop,” flowers on tables, the knowledge that you choose what to carry. The world is divided into weight you can hold and weight you cannot, and wisdom is knowing the difference.

Somewhere, there are shelves waiting for the next manga volume that won’t arrive, games he’ll never play, Funko Pops that will never complete their set. Collections pause when the collector stops. But the other things—the sounds, the showing up, the staying close to what matters—these continue. His children will call their own children someday with sounds they learned from him. Others will write in journals when the world presses too hard. Someone will remember that stress isn’t worth carrying, that love requires asking, that proximity is its own kind of courage.

The flowers are still on the table. No one has moved them yet.

A Visitation will be held from 10 AM – 12 PM with a Celebration of Angel’s Life to begin at 12 PM on Saturday, February 14, 2026 at the Charles F. Snyder, III Funeral Home & Crematory, 2421 Willow Street Pike, Willow Street, PA 17584. Angel will be laid to rest at Mellinger Mennonite Cemetery.