When my friend Barbara Gailey’s heart stopped four years ago, she told me that she saw angels. They were beautiful and she was tempted to go with them. But she wasn’t quite ready to leave this world yet, so fortunately, when her heart stopped, she was already at the hospital. Her pastor was there and prayed for her as it was happening, and doctors were able to revive her.
This past Saturday, I and six of my friends had the privilege of singing at her funeral at Habing Family Funeral Home in Gilroy. We sang the song she had requested: “Just a Closer Walk With Thee.” She made the most of those four extra years she had here on earth, doing volunteer work to aid local teachers in their classrooms, giving music lessons and paying for music lessons for children who couldn’t afford them.
She also taught at Vacation Bible School, was active in the California Retired Teachers’ Association, sang in her church choir and washed hand towels each week at her church, which were used to help keep the fellowship hall clean. She collected bags for carrying groceries and egg cartons for St. Joseph’s Family Center, so families with none could safely carry their eggs home too.
Each Christmas, she donated to the Toy Drive for Gilroy’s poorest migrant families that I help coordinate. But she didn’t just donate the toys; she actually came down and was present with the families for the Christmas party. She sat with them at the meal; she tried foods she didn’t recognize; she smiled and greeted them and tried out some Spanish words. Most of our volunteers don’t do that; they may donate great items and they may bake delicious cookies, but Barbara was one of the only people who actually sat and ate with the families and gave personal attention. She was unfailingly supportive of the event.
A teacher in Gilroy for 46 years, Barbara’s greatest strength was as a storyteller; she could have written a book filled with her spirited stories of life as a rancher’s daughter on the Nebraska Sand Hills, how she managed to hide her pregnancy and keep teaching in a time when it was against the rules for a woman to teach if she became pregnant and her life as a strong-willed woman in a time when women were expected to be docile and cooperative. I will never forget how she made the women laugh at Serendipity with the line she used when in a situation where she felt threatened by a member of the opposite sex: “Don’t worry; I know where to kick. Daddy taught me.”
I will also never forget the story she told of the time she scheduled an official appointment with her husband’s secretary in order to meet with him at his office, so she could bring up a problem they had. It was a setting where he would have no choice but to listen, and in which it would impossible to have a proper fight with her—brilliant strategy!
For the past several years, a group of ladies known as Serendipity met at Barbara’s house every Wednesday for what was called “Bible study,” but became more of a support group. The group first met at the home of Florence Trimble, a longtime Gilroy resident who many of you remember as a local activist for the homeless and for all the disenfranchised of our community. At Serendipity, I sat at her feet and learned how to care for others outside of myself and my own needs, how to be effective in making a difference for those in need, and how to have a positive outlook no matter what.
For 13 years, I have been a part of this group, and a great level of trust has developed. As one of our members said while sitting in Barbara’s living room: “It’s a wonderful thing to be loved by this group.”
When Barbara’s heart was winding down shortly before the end of her life, a group of 22 people from her church gathered together in her living room to sing her favorite hymns. Still showing signs of that feisty spirit of hers and the lifelong teacher she had always been, she managed to sing along and even to correct one of the singers.
When her heart did finally stop Aug. 14, the angels came again for her. And in the words of her best friend Marilyn Schlesinger: “This time Barbara went with them.”
