SPANISH FORK -- She stared at the ground where her son is now buried. Other than a simple "thank you" to the hundreds who offered condolences, Patricia Olmos couldn't say much.
   
    People used the word "inseparable" to describe the relationship between Patricia and her son, Lance Cpl. Cesar Fabricio Machado-Olmos, who died last week in Iraq.
   
    Even as the young Marine's casket was lowered into the ground at the Spanish Fork City Cemetery on Wednesday, Patricia didn't want to leave her son behind. She threw a bouquet of fresh flowers on top of his casket and at the end of the funeral, she asked what time the cemetery closed.
   
    Hundreds of people who knew the young man, and even those who didn't, joined his family at the cemetery and for services at the Palmyra Stake Center. Spanish Fork is one of two places Machado-Olmos called home. The other was Los Mochis, in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico.
   
    Machado-Olmos is the second Mexican national with roots in Utah to die in Iraq this year. Officials say they are working on getting his citizenship awarded posthumously. Cpl. Juan Carlos Cabral, of Washington Terrace, was awarded U.S. citizenship on the day he was buried.
   
    "It doesn't seem fair," said Norma Ornelas of Provo, who attended the funeral with her husband, Alberto. "They should have given him citizenship when he signed up."
   
    "When they are dead, what good does it do?" she asked.
   
    "But he must have loved this country to give his life," Alberto Ornelas said. "Deep down, he knew this country had taken him in. That's why he gave his life for it."
   
    Machado-Olmos, who would have turned 21 last Monday, died Sept. 13 when his Humvee rolled while on patrol. In spirit, he was a citizen of two countries. He loved the United States, especially the mountains in his adopted state of Utah, where he went hiking on his final visit two months ago, said his uncle Ernesto Castaneda.
   
    But like many immigrants, he never forgot Mexico and would visit family members there.
   
    In Utah, he was part of the immigrant LDS community that belongs to what some refer to as "Barrio Spanish Fork."
   
    Maria Mejia remembered him as a devout member of the LDS Church. Like Mejia, many spoke of him as if he had been their own son and cried with the family for their collective loss.
   
    "I try to pray for all the soldiers," Mejia said. "But I especially prayed for him because I knew he found himself in that land. I know in my heart that he was a hero."
   
    His family in Mexico is Roman Catholic and they paid tribute to him with a Mass in Los Mochis, Castaneda said.
   
    "Everything that can be said about him has been said in the last few days," he said.
   
    And all the worlds that he lived in and out of, that of a soldier, of an immigrant, a veteran, a son, gathered at once to mourn.
   
    About 60 members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars saluted the hearse as it went into the cemetery.
   
    "It is not a loss," said Alberto Ornelas as he watched Machado-Olmos' mother, his stepfather, Esau Acosta, and his siblings. "He gave his life for his family, for his friends, and that's very important."