Gayle Service

1. Introduction and welcome (Doug)

2. Prayer (Phil)

3. Robert Frost poem (Phyllis)

4. Little Wings (Doug)

5. Music (Aran, Nelson, Darrell)

6. Sharing from anyone (Doug to announce)

7. Closing and thank you from the family (Lynn)

1. 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. 

2. Prayer
   
   

3. 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.

4. 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

5. Music

6. Sharing 

7. 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