Gertride Gibbs

Gertride Eloise Kist Gibbs died March 12, 2009. She was born June 5, 1904.

Since her birth a century ago, she made this earth a happier place.

From that time long ago when she tumble-saulted around the elephant ear plant in her front yard and wove bridal wreathes from clematis for her little girl hair;

Through the years of young womanhood, coming home from work at the telephone company to help her mother with the house chores, then going back to work in the evening, so tired that the trolley driver had to clang clang clang her awake at the stop;

During the war years of motherhood, when butter was scarce and sugar was dear, yet she somehow made dessert for her children every night;

Through the time when all five of us were in our teens, and she continued to mother us, love us and guide us;

Through the hard years of Daddy’s cancer, when she took care of him and went to work again to keep food on the table when he could not;

Through the shock of widowhood and the heartbreak of losing two sons, through the long years of her

90s when she cared for Aunt Myrtle and gave her a happy old age;

Up to the last days before David and Richard finally came to take her to heaven via a short stop in Hawaii, her heaven on earth;

Through those last days she still woke up every morning with love in her heart and delight at the beautiful world.

She changed with the centuries, welcoming airplanes, washing machines, dishwashers, microwaves and automobiles with wondering love. She kept her voter registration current, and was delighted when the candidate she voted for, Barack Obama, became president. Though she grew up in the last century in the deep South, she held everyone, black and white, gay and straight, Muslim and Jew, Christian and Buddhist, in her heart. She was an amazing person, and we are all blessed that she was on this earth.

We miss her: her five children Paula, Louis, Barbara, David and Richard; her “adopted” children Joan, Lori and Paul, Dana and Jim, Connie, Peter and Tim, Annette and Jane, Helen and Martin, Katherine, Eileen, and Karin; her many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren, extended family, neighbors, staff at the grocery store where she exercised almost daily until the stroke took her legs, the library ladies, her beloved fire district firemen and paramedics who came out to visit her every Christmas with the big red sleigh, her best friends Emma Stevenson and Emma O’Toole, and all the people in Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky and Whidbey Island whose lives she touched and forever changed.

She had the greatest gift of all to give: she was radiant, even gaudy, with unconditional love, which she gave to all her people, her pets Oscar, Roxanne, Buster and Joe-Joe, to everyone and everything, beautiful or not. In her last days she added more people to love; Jan and Karen from Island Home Nursing, and Doug, Stephanie, Beth and Carol from Skagit Hospice.

Gifts in her memory may be made to WAIF, Skagit Hospice or Hearts & Hammers. Or you could just go out into the sunshine and love the world as she did.

To Gertride in Her Second Century

She sits there by the hearth, reading a book

Her hand loving the turning of the pages

As it has loved me through my chaptered years;

She’s been there filling endless cookie jars,

Strong in my mind as always, deep as water.

But now I look at her hands with new eyes:

The nest of purple lace and withered crepe,

As white as tide-line

driftwood and as gnarled;

The fingers crooked with a century

Of mending clothes to keep her children warm.