A ‘good life’: Gilroy’s Lillie Reutlinger

There are those whose accomplishments in life are trumpeted far and wide, and then there are those whose quiet lives pass among us underappreciated, sometimes going almost unnoticed.
Gilroy resident Lillie Reutlinger was one such life. Although beloved by all who came into contact with her friendly ways and warm, good humored personality, after she passed away last December it dismayed me that I could find no mention of her in any newspaper, no notice of services being held, no obituary, no family contact information, no photo and no record of any gravesite.
It was almost as if she had never existed.
I went online to search for any information I could find. The online U.S. government’s Social Security Death Index revealed that Lillie was born in February of 1926 and passed away on Sunday, December 22, 2013. On Ancestry.com, I discovered that Lillie came from Grand Island, Nebr. and was married to Donald William Reutlinger, who died Dec. 8, 1983 leaving Lillie a widow for 30 years.
The only other piece of information I found that gave me a glimpse of insight into Lillie’s past was a mention that she had been president of the Cupertino Women’s Club from 1996-97, a branch of the world’s largest nonpartisan, nondenominational women’s volunteer service organization.
Lillie lived at the Village Green retirement community in Gilroy for a number of years before her final months spent at the Morgan Hill Pacific Hills Manor. Lillie had often expressed to me how much it meant to her to have the pastors from her church regularly visit, first Pastor Eric Cho and then Pastor Dawn Boyd, right up until the end of her life.
Since there had been no opportunity to mark her passing, Lillie’s friend Pat Walker, a fellow resident at Village Green, invited those who knew her to get together on January 30 to remember Lillie.
It was very informal, just a group that usually meets for donuts and coffee on Thursday mornings in the break room.
Those present recalled how when Lillie was a child, her father was a veterinarian, and Lillie had loved visiting the animals with him. She also loved to read; her favorite genres were romance and mystery. One fellow resident recalled how much Lillie loved games, including Poker, and how she had bought all the cards to start Bingo at Village Green.
She loved to meet people and to talk to people, and carrying an oxygen tank behind her didn’t slow her down much.
“She used to go trucking along the hallway, visiting people,” one resident said with a smile.
“She was so friendly,” a neighbor remembered. “When my daughter visited, she said, ‘Oh mama, I enjoyed talking to her so much!’”
“She was the first person I met when I moved here,” her friend Mary said.
At Pacific Hills Manor, her doctor saw her gift and asked her to make the rounds to help lift the spirits of the other residents by visiting them.
Something that made Lillie and others she told laugh a lot was the type of medication she was being given because of its unexpected side effect that helped improve her lung function.
“You know what they give us here?” she whispered. “Viagra!”
Later, her health worsened, but her spirit wasn’t dampened.
“You could still see her smiling through the oxygen mask,” Pastor Dawn said. “She would brighten my day.”
When I visited Lillie, she expressed her strong faith and gave me a Bible.
She said, “I’ve had a good life.”
She had pictures of her family adorning her walls, and she talked of them often. She also had a love of birds and pointed out one of her most prized belongings, a gorgeous life-size sculpture of birds in yellow, red and blue glass.
At the small memorial service, Pastor Dawn prayed with us. We sang hymns Lillie would have enjoyed: “In the Garden” and “Amazing Grace,” and we recited the 23rd Psalm together from memory, not even realizing until Lillie had brought us together at that moment just how much of it we knew by heart.
Now that she’s gone, I wish I could ask her more questions about her life. I wish I had taken her picture. Though there is little tangible record of Lillie’s life, she believed in the words of a verse from the Psalms that says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13)
She knew that just as no two pieces of knitting ever turn out exactly the same, she was appreciated for her unique design and all that made her Lillie. And though it’s not much I can offer, at least now there is something about her life that will live on in print, just as she is imprinted in our hearts.