Gayle Service
Introduction and welcome (Doug)
Prayer (Phil)
Robert Frost poem (Phyllis)
Little Wings (Doug)
Music (Aran, Nelson, Darrell)
Sharing from anyone (Doug to announce)
Closing and thank you from the family (Lynn)
Introduction
Welcome. We are here to celebrate the life of Gayle Robertson- daughter, mother, sister, and dear friend. This is an informal graveside gathering and we will ask anyone who would like to share something about Gayle to feel free to do so after the music portion.
Born in Martinsville, Virginia, Gayle lived in Charlottesville most of her life. She is a graduate of Lane High School, PVCC (Piedmont virginia comm college), and UVA School of Nursing. She worked at Martha Jefferson and UVA hospitals as an RN and retired from UVA Medical Center in 2012. She was recipient of UVA Hospital's first Nurse of Distinction (NOD) award. She was a lifelong member of the University Baptist Church.
Gayle adored and raised two children, her son, Nelson Leavell Garnett, Jr. and daughter, Phyllis Lynn Garnett. She loved being a grandmother to Aran Garnett-Deakin and Nelson Garnett-Deakin, named for brother Nelson and grandfather. She appreciated her flower garden and was an avid music lover. She had a beautiful voice and enjoyed singing. She instilled a deep love of music in the many members of her family.
We were blessed to have her live across the street from us for the last few years of her life.
Prayer
Poem
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Little Wings
Excerpt from Sunrise for Helen Chickering
It’s a wild snow
Racing like small white pigeons
Across the airport’s tarmac
I wish you could see it
I wish we could take you out
To sit in a lawn chair
And watch the snow over the airport
Like we watch fireworks each year
Little Wings
For Gayle Robertson
You pass and
We long for details
And see
A fox carving burnt in wood
Wind at the window
Dry leaves scatter
Green walls, the pictures of your family
You are smaller than we’ve seen you
And pass
Almost silent
In the morning
Slipping out like the last warm day of autumn
The pain of losing a child
Before yourself
That weight
Packed up and leaving with you
Your bent hands still
The room still
The air still
Air
We long for details
And, outside, the wind reminds of the day
Helen died
Like you, a touchstone of family
The day also cold
And Ashoken’s Farewell
In the air
In the air still
These details
are little wings
Lady bugs
Listening for your last breath and not knowing
When it comes
The crow on your lawn
Each morning
The new cardinals
The finches
Finally turning off the walkie talkies
We no longer need
The silence that is wind
Details
Little wings
Every mote we notice
As you leave
Music
Sharing
Closing and thank you from the family.
2906 Green Meadows Ln
Charlottesville, VA 22901
White Oak Acorns
- For Nelson Garnett (1967 – 1991)
More acorns than most remember, Like stones,
like walking on ball-bearings or bones,
someone says, as we step from the wood.
Bodies rise with dusk in a newly mowed field-
across the road people leap, climb
after an arcing frisbee, jump from time
to time on memory to see the young man who last
week sketched the skeletal trees, who passed
the droughted Monocacy, who we recall warmed with
beer. A manned balloon scatters deer in uncut
winter grain. So many animals have leapt
into roads here, so many acorns are left
unturned by hands, by mouths, as we stand
and watch, blinded by the sun’s last bands,
climb and catch- soft with this young man’s
wake and dusk in a newly mowed field.
Sunrise
- for Helen, before her death
I hear you are dying.
It’s near sunrise.
I’ll drive to work, like any day.
It’s snowing
But the sun still shows through a break
In the clouds
It’s a wild snow
Racing like small white pigeons
Across the airport’s tarmac
I wish you could see it
I wish we could take you out
To sit in a lawn chair
And watch the snow over the airport
Like we watch fireworks each year
I only have the sound of my tires now
Steady over the white road
Splitting the snow coming to me
And the sun so bright for so much snow
Now the clouds fold over the sun
Then release it in time to my tire music
The snow across the light tarmac
To the east, with the sun
Spinning the planes and hangar dizzy
Suddenly up to the light poles
Back to the road
And then a bend
And the sun is behind a hill
The snow suspends, stops
Before the green of pines
Before I turn to my office
Park and go into work
But can’t work
Before the bright light of sun
And snow
And you
