Mary Virginia Alla Bastiani, 83, of Reading, passed away peacefully on the evening of Wednesday, September 2, with family by her side, following a brief hospitalization after a stroke.

Mary was born on December 17, 1942, in Washington, D.C., the only child of Adolph Arthur Alla and Ruth Samuelson Alla. She attended Winchester High School, graduating in 1960, and went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in Education from Boston University in 1964.

Mary began her career as an elementary school teacher at the Gleason School in Medford. She married her husband, Anthony (Tony), on October 12, 1968, and dedicated herself to raising their family as a loving stay-at-home mother. Years later, she returned to education as a tutor at Coolidge Middle School and as a private tutor, helping many young people in Reading.

Throughout her life, Mary was deeply involved in her community where she developed many meaningful friendships. She served as a leader for Camp Fire and Cub Scout troops, was an active member of the St. Athanasius Choir for 18 years, served as a Welcome Wagon hostess for the Town of Reading, and held leadership roles as President of both the Young Women’s League and the Friends of the Reading Public Library. She was also a member of the Reading College Club.

Mary enjoyed gardening, knitting, playing games, reading biographies of American historical figures, and attending live theater.

Above all, Mary cherished her family. She was blessed to share nearly 58 years of marriage with her beloved husband, Anthony Vincent Bastiani, and was a devoted and loving mother to Dr. Andrea Bastiani Archibald (David), David Anthony Bastiani (Laura), and Allison Ruth Bastiani (Alex Oliver). She was the proud grandmother of Ethan and Avery Archibald; Ian and Mia Bastiani; Benjamin and Leo Volchok; and Cole Deason.

Mary’s most treasured moments were those spent with the people she loved. She was immensely proud to be Anthony’s wife and adored her three children and seven grandchildren, who brought her immeasurable joy. She took pleasure in Game Days and lunch dates with her girlfriends and was especially elated when watching her grandchildren’s activities or gathered with family by the ocean on Cape Cod.

Funeral arrangements are by the Doherty Barile Family Funeral Home. A Funeral Mass Celebrating Mary’s Eternal Life will be held on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, at 10:30 a.m. at St. Athanasius Church, 300 Haverhill Street, Reading. Interment will follow at Wildwood Cemetery in Winchester.

Friends and family are kindly invited to gather and share memories on Monday, September 7, 2026 from 3 pm to 6 pm at Doherty Barile Family Funeral Home of Reading, 11 Linden Street, Reading, MA. Parking attendants and elevator are available.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the The Home for Little Wanderers or to a charity benefiting children experiencing homelessness.

Mary's Eulogy:

My mother, Mary Alla Bastiani, was born on December 17, 1942, in Washington, D.C., the only child of Ruth Samuelson Alla and Adolph Arthur Alla.

She moved with her parents first to Brooks Village in Medford and then to Winchester, Massachusetts, as a young girl, graduated from Winchester High School in 1960, and went on to Boston University, graduating in1964 with a Bachelors of Science in Education.

She began her professional life as an elementary school teacher and later worked as a private tutor. But the role she was proudest of—and the one that defined so much of her life—was caring for her family.

And that family began with a love story that was, remarkably, ahead of its time.

My parents were matched in the late-1960s by one of the original computer dating systems—which somehow, long before online dating apps, managed to get this one exactly right.

On October 12, 1968, she married my father, Anthony—Tony—and for nearly 58 years, they built a life and a family together.

And if you knew my mother, you knew that she loved fiercely.

She loved her family – from her own grandparents down to her grandchildren, she cared deeply about her friends and had a way of making the people around her feel special. She spent her life taking care of the people she loved. And I think the best way we can honor her today is to tell the stories of how she loved us.

She was, always, family first.

She was the mother of three children—me, David, and Allison—and she warmly welcomed our spouses, my own husband David, my brother’s wife Laura, and Allison’s future husband, Alex, into our family with that same love.

And then came perhaps one of her greatest joys: her seven grandchildren—Ethan, Avery, Benjamin, Leo, Cole, Ian, and Mia. After six grandsons, she finally got her granddaughter.

She adored following their lives by text, Face times and Instagram. When Ethan and Avery were little, she loved going to their Little League games. She enjoyed selecting books with Ian and following Mia’s horseback riding and jumping. And she was a devoted fan of Winchester sports—football, sailing—but perhaps especially Leo and his javelin throwing!

It really didn’t matter what they were doing. If one of her grandchildren cared about it, she cared about it, too.

My mother knew how to care for people, not just in words but in the everyday acts that make up a life.

She and my father cared lovingly for her own parents as they grew older. And during the COVID pandemic, she and my father even brought my grandmother—who had been living independently up until that time—into their home and cared for her until her passing.

That instinct to care extended well beyond our family. She volunteered throughout her life, served her community in countless ways, and even sang – as an alto – in the choir here for 18 years.

That was my mother.

And she certainly also showed up for us.

My mother didn’t just love us. She kept track of us.

And I mean that quite literally.

If one of her children was getting on an airplane, she would wake up early to wish us safe travels, want to know where we were staying, track our flights often through the night, and wait to hear that we had touched down safely.

Just last week, when I was in Reading with my dad, I found a note she had made with my husband David’s and my itinerary from our recent trip to Italy—including the international phone numbers for our hotels.

That was Mom. We were adults with lives and families of our own, traveling all over the world, and she was still keeping track of exactly where we were.

She was also our family historian. She remembered and documented everything in her little blue book—the joyful anniversaries and birthdays, but also the difficult dates. She knew when a day might be hard for one of us, and a text would arrive, often with pictures, reminding us that she remembered and that she loved us.

Family mattered enormously to her.

And I think being an only child shaped that part of her. She was especially close to her own fun-loving mother, who used to tease her when she was a little girl: “Don’t you get tired of being so good? Don’t you ever want to be a little naughty?”

Apparently, even then, Mom was Mom.

But she did wish she had siblings of her own. And when she married my father, in many ways she found them. She adored my father’s brothers and sisters and their spouses, and later her nieces and nephews. She loved them as her own. Those relationships were deeply important to her throughout her life. She treasured being part of the larger family she had always wanted.

And “We Are Family” became her song. If it came on at a wedding, Mom was dancing. She would sometimes sing it to the three of us, too, playfully reminding us of something she wanted us always to remember: we belonged to one another.

Perhaps the greatest expression of that was the way she raised the three of us.

She taught David, Allison, and me to love one another, support one another, and be there for one another. Always.

And I don’t think I have ever understood the magnitude of that gift more than I have over these past few weeks.

I could not have gotten through them without my amazing brother and sister. We were together by Mom’s side, and when we weren’t all in the room, we were constantly texting and calling one another. Together, we made decisions we never wanted to have to make. We advocated for her. We cared for her and for my father. And we cared for each other.

Both of my parents taught us how to do that.

But while Mom took loving us very seriously, she certainly didn’t take everything seriously.

She had an often infectious—and sometimes unstoppable—laugh. Never at someone else’s expense, but sometimes, unfortunately, at wildly inappropriate moments. Something would strike her as silly or funny, seemingly out of nowhere, and then sometimes she simply couldn’t stop. And once Mom started laughing, it was very hard not to start laughing with her.

She also knew how to enjoy her life.

She loved her rock garden, reading historical fiction and biographies, going to the theater with my father and their friends. She loved the Mexican Train game and lunches with her girlfriends.

She loved games—especially word games and Wordle.

The opposite of me, my mother was a night owl, and she would stay awake until midnight so she could do the new Wordle and excitedly post her result before her children and grandchildren had a chance to post theirs.

She loved the crisp, cool weather of fall. And she loved Thanksgiving dinner so much that she would happily have eaten it year-round. She was known for her sweet potato souffle and amazing apple pies!

And she loved the ocean.

Some of our happiest family memories are of Cape Cod—first when David, Allison, and I were young, and later when we returned with our own families and children. My mother would put her beach chair right in the water, sit there doing Sudoku, and later go splashing in the waves.

She had traveled the globe with her mother as a young woman, just before she met my father. She saw extraordinary places. But I don’t think any place in the world ever meant as much to her as wherever her family happened to be together.

She loved visiting us wherever our lives took us, too.

When I was at Skidmore, she would come visit me and we’d shop together in town and get lemon meringue pie at the Springwater Inn. She didn’t want a fancy hotel. She wanted to stay with me, slumber-party style, in my dorm room.

On one visit, the fire alarm went off, and Mom dutifully joined all of us college students outside in her robe—admittedly getting some pretty funny looks.

And those are the memories I find myself holding onto now—not the milestones or the big family occasions, but these wonderfully ordinary moments.

Mom on an Aero mattress on my dorm-room floor.

Mom laughing when she absolutely shouldn’t be laughing.

Mom sitting with her chair in the ocean doing puzzles.

Mom waiting for the text saying our plane had landed.

Mom staying up until midnight to beat us all to Wordle.

Mom cheering from the sidelines for one of her grandchildren.

Because taken together, those small moments tell the story of her life.

She wanted to know where we were. She wanted to know that we were safe. She wanted us to remember the important days and the people who came before us. And above all, she wanted us to know that wherever life took us, we belonged to one another.

She was a devoted daughter. A mother who organized so much of her life around her children. A grandmother who took enormous delight and pride in her seven grandchildren. A sister-in-law who became a sister. And a friend who remembered, stayed connected, and continued to show up even when those friendships became harder because of illness or age.

And she was a devoted and loving wife to my father.

One of the last sentiments she shared from the hospital when hearing about a young friend who was recently divorced, was that she needed to go out and find someone “just like Dad.”

After almost 58 years, that is what she still thought of the man that computer had chosen for her all those years ago.

Dad, she loved you so very much.

Over the coming days, months, and years, I know there will be so many moments when we instinctively reach for her.

Those moments will be hard.

But I also think they will remind us of how extraordinarily lucky we were to be loved by her.

Because that was what Mom wanted most for all of us.

To know how very much we were loved.

And to always remember that we are family.