“She’s my angel and I know she’s always close by,” said Josefina Cañete de Núñez as she holds the photograph of her daughter, Gladys Josefina Núñez Cañete, who was working in the perfume section when she died in the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire on Aug. 1, 2004 in Asunción, Paraguay. (Marta Escurra for Infosurhoy.com)

Josefina Cañete de Núñez and Cristóbal Núñez await the ceremony at the memorial held at the former site of the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket, where a fire took the life of their 29-year-old daughter, Gladys Josefina Núñez Cañete. (Marta Escurra for Infosurhoy.com)

Josefina Cañete de Núñez cries in memory of her daughter, Gladys Núñez Cañete during the Aug. 1 ceremony to commemorate the 409 victims of the Ycuá Bolaños fire in 2004. (Marta Escurra for Infosurhoy.com)

“No matter how much I promise myself I won’t cry, her memory always causes this tremendous pain that only a mother can understand,” Josefina Cañete de Núñez said, referring to the loss of her daughter in the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire eight years ago. (Marta Escurra for Infosurhoy.com)

A total of 409 balloons – one for every person who died in Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire – were released during the ceremony on the eighth anniversary of the deadly blaze on Aug. 1, 2004. (Marta Escurra for Infosurhoy.com)

“I only know my mother through photographs. I was very young when she passed away and I barely have any memories of her,” said Abel Núñez, 11, who was only 3 when his mother, Gladys Josefina Núñez Cañete, died in the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire in 2004. (Marta Escurra for Infosurhoy.com)

Abel Núñez plays the song “Estrellita” on the violin during the memorial ceremony for the 409 victims of the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire. Abel Núñez is the son of Gladys Josefina Núñez, who died in the blaze. “I know that wherever she is, she can hear me,” he said. (Marta Escurra for Infosurhoy.com)