Barbara Ann Wilkerson

"They don't make people beautiful in the soul like BW any more....", remarked Secretary of State Colin Powell in August, 2004. Powell used initials almost exclusively to refer to close friends and colleagues, always signing off himself as "CP". "BW" referred to Barbara Wilkerson, my wife, who passed away on Sunday, November 28th of this year. Powell was right.

In my own 76 years of life -- 55 married to BW -- I have rarely met anyone who was as gentle, kind, yet powerfully courageous, as Barbara. She would find a good point in Satan himself and then try her best to nurture it. She called herself a "lite Catholic" because after the scandals in the Catholic Church in recent years she quit attending Mass; but Christ could not have asked for a better disciple.

I will miss her laughter, her Winnie-the-Pooh faith, her penchant for Teddy Bears (she brought home from London for twenty years Harrod's "Christmas Bear"), but above all her incredible courage and tenacity. When told she had developed pancreatic cancer and that it had spread to her liver and lungs, and when she then was offered chemotherapy, she told the attending oncologist and his assembled team, "I believe in quality not quantity of life. I've had 71 excellent years of life. That was a grand gift. I think I'll go ahead and die now." And 55 days later she did just that, in excruciating pain that in the final hours even the morphine would not relieve. But merciful death did.

She always referred to herself with disadvantaged children and people who had much less than she, as a Guardian Angel on earth upon whom they could rely. She was and they did. In the process, these children and others learned to respect and love her. Many have poured out their love for her to me in the days since her death -- the greatest token of real friendship and love one can imagine.

Now she has her fondest wish of all: she is a first class, real Guardian Angel.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.murphy-fh.com for the Wilkerson family.