Gaby

 

baby Rebecca 

Jill, Gaby

 baby Hannah

Max, BJ, Gaby, Elaine

reading Santa's letter

  Christmas at Elaine's, with Stuart and Sheila
Caleb, Sarah, Jeb, (and that's the side of Becca's head)

baby Christopher

Rebecca and Gordon in background

 after someone's performance, with BJ, Dot, Max, Ruth;

Elaine, Stuart, Sheila in back

 whose birthday?

 

2009, in nursing home

I'd like to acknowledge the passing of our dear Gaby.  She died in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on Friday evening, July 22, 2011, with Omead present.  Omead and Golzar Amirmotzedi, brother and sister, are two young adults who were raised by Gaby.  She was hired by their family as a nanny since the time that Omead was an infant. Their bond of love and devotion is as real as any blood relation I have ever seen.  These two young people have been Gaby's angels during these last years, visiting her daily, bringing her food, getting her placed in proper facilities, and seeing to all her medical and personal needs.  In the last months, Omead has come to the hospital daily to feed her dinner, even baby food, when Gaby has been too weak to feed herself.  The hospital staff said they have never seen anything like it.  We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.  May God bless them.

Gaby Goodale was born Gabrielle Mettraux, on August 22, 1918, in Neyruz, Switzerland.  She was one of 15 children.  She was one of the older ones, so she was a caretaker of younger siblings, particularly a set of twins who were her specific charge.  Her first marriage was an unhappy one, during which she had two children, a son and a daughter.  After her husband left, she needed to work to support her family, and so her husband's parents took her children while she worked.  In the process the grandparents alienated the children from their mother, and Gaby's relationship with them suffered ever since then. They became estranged from each other, and Gaby spoke little of them in later years. She is naturally nurturing, however, and has raised generations of children in different homes where she has been employed as a nanny and housekeeper.  On June 6, 1955, she married my mother's cousin David Wilder Goodale, who had served in the Army as a musician and met Gaby during the war.  They came back to the United States, where she was happily married until David's death to brain cancer in 1965. She was truly in love with him.  I remember that period of time in my childhood, and how much comfort my mother was to Gaby at her time of grief.  It forged an inseparable bond between the two women.  A year or two later, when my mother was having a difficult pregnancy (expecting Jan at age 44), Gaby came regularly to our home to cook and houseclean.  She was an amazing housekeeper, and folded laundry in the neatest piles you can imagine. The bathrooms sparkled.  My favorite meal she would make was baked chicken breasts, each cooked with a thick layer of moist stuffing on top. Not sure how she did that. She was a great support to our family throughout that period, and into Jan's infancy.  During all the years that followed, Gaby has been a part of every important family celebration and many holidays.  Christmas, baptisms, baby blessings, special programs and other occasions were not complete unless Gaby was there. She taught me how to wrap presents.  And helped me learn to crochet.

She was often the quiet one in the background, but she enjoyed and appreciated all the humor, fun, and excitement of being part of our crowd. She especially loved the Christmas eve pageant, and family prayer.  I remember the Christmas eve she just kept giggling to herself, and we wondered, "What has gotten into Gaby?"  Later, when the kids had gone to bed, she brought out a huge model of a Boeing 747 (must have been 3 feet long) for Jack.  It was the hit of Christmas.  Christmas and Thanksgiving always meant "Gaby bread." She would spend days making twenty or more golden saffron scented loaves.  They  were artistically split and finished with an egg white wash before baking, which made them come out of the oven glossy and beautiful. She always brought poinsettias for all the households, scenic calendars of the Swiss countryside, European chocolates for everyone to divide, and t-shirts for the kids from the open air market in her hometown in Switzerland.

In fact, as I recall, I can never remember Gaby arriving at our home empty-handed.  She always had a gift of some kind.  She bought me my luggage when I went to college.  She bought me my first set of china when I got married.  I thought she was rich.  We always teased her, that she was our "rich relative."  But she actually had very little in monetary terms.  She worked as a telephone operator for an apartment complex, as a housekeeper, and as a nanny.  She worked hard, always. She never lost her very strong french accent, and we often wondered how she fared as a telephone operator!  She lived in a tiny apartment, alone.  Her entire household decor was photographs of loved ones.  A couple of years ago, when visiting her apartment, I realized that every wall and surface was covered with photographs.  There were pictures of my family, and others, in every age and stage. I don't think she ever threw any of them away.

When I last saw her, in the hospital a few weeks ago, she was almost too feeble to speak. Breathing was hard.  She managed to say a few things, though.  She said, "Everybody dies sometime."  She said, "Tell everyone I love them."  She said, "Tell your mother I love her.  We had fun times together."  The most animated facial expression she showed that day was when I told her that Rebecca was expecting another baby.  I think she would have laughed then if she could. 

I will miss Gaby very much. 

 

This is how I remember her.