‘A Mother’s Love’: Palatine singer-songwriter created a tribute to the grandmother she never knew as a gift to her mom

Every Mother’s Day, Lisa Medina would see a tear in her mother’s eye as she thought of her own mom.

“The way she would talk about her, it sounded so much like my own mom,” Medina said.

Never quite knowing what to get her for Mother’s Day, Medina put pen to paper in the spring of 2021 to convert her thoughts into song:

“Did you know when she goes, her love will never die

It goes on and on like a soothing lullaby

She had a vision of how a mom should be

She gave her love to you, you passed it on to me.”

Busy raising her own kids, Medina took a 13-year hiatus from music, but rediscovered her talent as a singer-songwriter during the pandemic.

“I wanted to write this song to say, ‘Hey, even though I never knew her, I feel like I know her just because of you,’” Medina told her mom.

That song, “A Mother’s Love,” is the first single on Medina’s debut album, “Wishes,” a project that blossomed from her experiences as a mom, and daughter. The 13-song album will be released in full May 31, but the first track came out just days ago to touch the hearts of mothers and daughters celebrating today.

“It was just really beautifully done,” said Elaine Pellegrinetti, Medina’s mom. “I’ve been listening to that for three years and I can’t get myself not to cry. It’s a tear-jerker. … The wording is beautiful. It just fits for everything.”

Medina convinced her mom and 11-year-old daughter Juliana to contribute background vocals on the track. For months, Pellegrinetti remained reluctant.

She often talked about harmonizing with her cousins growing up, sang in high school choir and musicals, and performed with a semiprofessional community theater group.

But “I said, ‘Oh Lisa, my voice is no good anymore,’” said Pellegrinetti, now 80. “She said, ‘I don’t care. You’ll be able to do it.’”

The day before the scheduled recording at a music studio in Burlington, Wisconsin, last year, Pellegrinetti went in for a mammogram. Doctors called back immediately.

“(They) said, you have to get right in,” Pellegrinetti said.

She decided to keep her appointment at the recording studio.

“I went there and I said, ‘This is a really bad day for me to try and sing.’ But I got through it. And then I went straight to the hospital from there. I got my diagnosis.”

Pellegrinetti had stage 3 breast cancer.

After multiple rounds of chemotherapy and a mastectomy, she now is cancer free.

It was cancer that took the life of Pellegrinetti’s mother, the subject of Medina’s song.

“She was really a very special mother,” Pellegrinetti said. “I know everyone probably says that about their mother. But all my friends just thought that she was their mom at times because she’d have them over before school and would make pancakes or whatever it was. She was just one of those moms.”

Catherine Hary was in her mid-40s when she died of cancer. Her daughter, only 16 at the time, soon became the woman of the house for her older brother and father.

“I really learned so much from her, as all the good things that a mother should be,” said Pellegrinetti, who went on to marry and have three kids of her own. “And I always told my kids that you might have a lot of other things that happen in your life, but if you’re a parent, that’s your most important job.”

She beams with pride about her kids. Lisa, the youngest, grew up singing in the church choir at Holy Family Parish in Inverness and performing in talent shows at Pleasant Hill Elementary School in Palatine. She was a state champion gymnast in the late 1990s at Fremd High School (her husband, Tony, now is principal at crosstown rival Palatine).

Medina counts her high school gymnastics coach, Larry Petrillo, as a major musical influence, having taught her how to play guitar.

After attending the University of Illinois on a gymnastics scholarship and double majoring in biology and Spanish, Medina worked in pharmaceutical sales by day and sang by night. She toured with the Grammy-nominated Angel Meléndez & the 911 Mambo Orchestra and got to sing the national anthem a few times at Wrigley Field in her 20s.

She started writing her own songs — enough for a whole album — but left it unfinished and unreleased, as her journey into motherhood began.

Now 44, Medina has started performing again — contemporary folk rock, with a Latin twist, she says — including gigs at Madcats in Palatine, Uncommon Ground in Chicago and the Coffee House at Chestnut & Pine in Burlington. It all leads up to a sold-out show June 7 at Hey Nonny in Arlington Heights.

She’ll be backed by her daughter, Juliana, and 13-year-old son Lucas, who plays lead guitar on two of the songs in the new album. Her youngest, 9-year-old Antonio, played steel tongue drum on one of the tracks.

Pellegrinetti, who now splits her time between Wisconsin and Florida, will be back in town for her daughter’s show. She doesn’t plan to go on stage to sing, but will be beaming from her table right up front.

“I think that song is going to be something,” she said of “A Mother’s Love.” “I really do.”