I got a chance to say goodbye to my friend Gaile today.
There was a memorial service for her at our old church. It was unlike any other memorial service I've been to. There were two videos, a live band on the stage singing worship songs, cameras recording the event...and 800+ people in attendance. Oh, and an airplane fly-over and a parachuter tribute. I'm not kidding.
If you're wondering what kind of royalty merits this kind of sendoff celebration...you didn't know Gaile. What made this all made sense is that she never would have believed it was for her.
The 800+ people in that auditorium came because they had been touched by this one woman in some deep way. Think of that...here's a woman who was by no conventional definition "famous"...she held no office, hosted no talk show, owned no corporation. She just loved every single person she came in touch with. Every one. And nearly a thousand came today to try to find some way to say thanks.
To some of us, she was a mother, to some a counselor, to some a sister and peer, and to most a walking example of what we want to be like when we grow up. She felt like love, like light, like the kind of humble shining understanding of God that I only taste on my best days.
As I wrote in my last post, Gaile was truly good, and what an honor it was to be among the hundreds of people who came today to celebrate that.
I don't begin to understand heaven. But if it exists, then Gaile is there. And my guess is the celebration at her arrival is far louder than ours in the wake of her departure. But for one hour, we may have rattled the windows up there a bit...proclaiming that, for whatever her return to God may be like, she sure did a damn fine job down here. And that, for all that heaven will bring her, we miss her like hell.
Goodbye, Gaile. And thank you, from one of the many you loved.
Peace,
Justin
